Suchergebnisse

Turkey first applied for EU membership in 1987 and started negotiations for full membership in October 2005 after lengthy and challenging negotiations between EU member states. This master's thesis attempts to examine the relationship between the negotiations for EU membership that are going on between Turkey and the EU Commission and the public discussion on the subject. The research material consists of selected posts on the Financial Times discussion forum and the Acquis communautaire and Copenhagen criteria. By comparing the research material this thesis attempts to investigate if the public deliberation and official negotiations focus on the same issues and requirements for membership. The theoretical background for this analysis is deliberative democracy, according to which public debate should be a prerequisite for agenda setting and decision making. The findings of the thesis reveal that the public discussion does touch on the acquis communautaire and Copenhagen criteria to some degree, but the public is also concerned with non-acquis issues such as the culture and history. A unique feature of the accession negotiations is also the amount of commentary from heads of state regarding the negotiations, which was also noted in the research material. In the light of deliberative democratic theory it can be noted that the public may take part in the discussion over Turkey's membership, but it has little or no chances of setting the agenda for the negotiations.

This work, prepared and published during the author's stay at the RSCAS, EUI, is a "compilation thesis" (in Finnish "artikkeliväitöskirja"), Department of Political Sciences, University of Helsinki, and contains the major part of the author's PhD thesis (forthcoming print monograph, 2012). ; The future is uncertain, and the financial system of the European Union has to take into account this uncertainty. This book looks at the different means it has at its disposal to do so, and analyses how these means have evolved since the creation of the general budget of the European Communities in 1968. The analysis is extended to a broader study of the development of the European Union through several case studies: negotiations on the Financial Regulation of 25 June 2002,on its first modifi cation, adopted on 13 December 2006, and on the Interinstitutional Agreement (IIA) of 17 May 2006 between the European Parliament, the Council and the Commission on budgetary discipline and sound fi nancial management and on the Multiannual Financial Framework for 2007-2013. The question of the uncertainty of the future is addressed using the so-called "Theory of Budgetary Flexibility". This theory, developed originally to analyse national budgetary systems, establishes an essential distinction between External Flexibility and Internal Flexibility, on the one hand, and Annual Flexibility and Multiannual Flexibility on the other hand. It is particularly useful here as it enables us to examine under a common framework processes that are often considered separate (and treated in the literature as such), and to draw conclusions at systems' level. The book is divided into three Parts: - Part One (Chapters 1 to 3), which forms the theoretical part of this book, includes an analysis of the specificities and of the functioning of the budgetary and financial systems of the European Union, while presenting an "état des lieux" of studies carried out in these fields; - Part Two (Chapters 4 to 13) deals with changes that have been made to various forms of flexibility since 1968. Special attention is paid not only to the consequences these changes have had for the various actors involved – namely the European Parliament, the Council, the Commission and Member States – but also for the financial system of the European Union as a whole; - Part Three (Chapters 14 to 18) addresses the question of how the changes examined in Part Two affect the general development of the European Union.

Euroopan komissio luotiin jotta se voisi ajaa yhteisöjen intressiä. Sen vuoksi siitä päätettiin tehdä itsenäinen. Mutta koska Euroopan Unionin vaikutus jäsenmaissaan on hyvin vahvaa, myös talouden kannalta, haluavat jäsenmaat vaikuttaa komissioon mahdollisimman paljon. Tämän vuoksi komission itsenäisyys vaarantuu. Perustamissopimukset koettavat hoitaa ongelman luomalla komissiolle joita-kin suojamekanismeja. Mutta ovatko ne riittäviä? Vaikuttaa siltä, että komissioon pystytään vaikuttamaan liikaa sen jokapäiväisessä työssä. Tämä vaikuttaminen alkaa jo komission nimittämisvaiheessa ja jatkuu koko ajan komission pohtiessa uuden lainsäädännön tarvetta ja komission valmistellessa uutta lainsäädäntöä. Komission lakiehdotelman sisältöön vaikuttavat usein paljonkin muut instituutiot, jäsenvaltiot sekä intressiryhmät. Tämä johtaa siihen, että komissio ei täysin pysty toteuttamaan yhteisöjen in-tressiä. Monin eri tavoin komission päätöksiin voivat vaikuttaa yksittäisten tai use-ampien jäsenmaiden edut, vaikka tarkoitus olisi ajaa yhteisöjen etua. The European Commission was created so that it could work to fulfil the Community Interest. Therefore it was decided to be an independent institution. But because the European Union affects its Member States very deeply, not least in budgetary ways, the Member States seem to want to influence the Commission as much as possible. Therefore the independence of the Commission is at stake. The Treaties try to deal with the problem by setting some protective mecha-nisms on the Commission. But is it enough? It seems that the Commission gets in-fluenced too much in its everyday work. This influencing starts already at the nomi-nation of the Commissioners, continues all the while when the Commission is decid-ing if new Community legislation is needed and while it drafts new legislation. The substance of the drafts are often influenced very much by the other institutions, Member States and interest groups. What this means is that the Commission can't fulfil its task at seeking the best of the Communities. In many different ways the decisions of the Commission may further the good of one or some interested parties instead of the Community In-terest.

Στην παρούσα εργασία παρατίθενται οδηγίες υπό τη μορφή «οδηγού χρήσης» για τη χρήση του δικτυακού τόπουτης Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης, EUR-Lex. Η επίσημη αυτή ιστοσελίδα της Ευρωπαϊκής Ένωσης παρέχει τη δυνατότητα σε οποιονδήποτε έχει πρόσβαση στο διαδίκτυο μέσω ηλεκτρονικού υπολογιστή να προβεί σε αναζήτηση και εύρεση Ευρωπαϊκής νομοθεσίας, όπως Κανονισμών, Αποφάσεων και Οδηγιών. Περιγράφονται με λεπτομέρεια οι διάφοροι τρόποι με τους οποίους μπορεί να γίνει η αναζήτηση της νομοθεσίας, ενώ παράλληλα εξηγείται ο τρόπος αξιολόγησης και διαχείρισης των αποτελεσμάτων της αναζήτησης. Η χρήση του δικτυακού τόπου είναι ελεύθερη (δεν απαιτείται συνδρομή) και αποτελεί ίσως το ευκολότερο και αμεσότερο εργαλείο ενημέρωσης των κτηνιάτρων αναφορικά με την ισχύουσα Ευρωπαϊκή νομοθεσία που αφοράσε όλους τους τομείς της Κτηνιατρικής Επιστήμης. ; This article contains instructions in the form of a "user's manual" for the use of the "EUR-Lex" web site, which is the official European Union site for access to the European Union legislation. Anyone having access to the internet can conduct searches using the "EUR-Lex" website and retrieve results pertaining to the European Union legislation, such as Regulations, Decisions and Directives. This article contains descriptions of the different ways and approaches for conducting searches as well as descriptions and directions on evaluating and further handling the search results. The use of the "Eur-Lex" web site is free of charge (no subscription is necessary). The "Eur-Lex" site is undoubtedly the easiest and most direct tool for accessing the European Legislation in force and constitutes an invaluable resource for veterinarians, who wish to keep up to date with European Union legislation pertaining to all aspects of Veterinary Medicine.

Tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan erästä Euroopan integraation vähemmän tutkittua ulottuvuutta: integraation vaikutuksia jälkikommunistisen yhteiskunnan kansalaisjärjestöihin. Liettualainen ympäristöjärjestösektori ja Ignalinan ydinvoimalan tapaus tarjoavat rajallisen, mutta samalla hyvin konkreettisen näkökulman kysymyksen tarkastelemiseksi. Tutkimus nojaa vuosina 2001-2003 kerätyn haastatteluaineiston laadulliseen analyysiin. Ignalinan ydinvoimalan tapauksen perusteella voidaan tulkita liettualaisten ympäristöjärjestöjen kohtaamia muutospaineita neuvostoajan lopulta aina Liettuan EU-jäsenyyteen saakka. Ignalinan ydinvoimalan ympärille keskittynyt liikehdintä oli yksi keskeisimmistä neuvostovallan vastaisen protestin välineistä 1980-luvun lopun Liettuassa. Ignalinan ydinvoimalasta muodostui tuolloin neuvostovallan poliittinen symboli; protestointi ydinvoimalaa vastaan oli samalla vastalause Moskovan sanelupolitiikalle ja vallitsevalle yhteiskunnalliselle järjestykselle. Ignalinan poliittinen symboliasema kuitenkin muuttui radikaalisti Liettuan itsenäisyysjulistuksen myötä: voimalasta muodostui niin taloudellisesti kuin poliittisestikin tärkeä kansallisen suvereniteetin osa. 1990-luvun lopulla ydinvoimalan poliittisen symboliaseman muutos sai yhä vahvemman ilmentymän EU:n esittäessä Ignalinan molempien reaktoreiden alasajoa ennen niiden lasketun käyttöiän umpeutumista. Eräät liettualaiset ympäristöjärjestöt toimivat aktiivisesti osana laajempia eurooppalaisia kansalaisjärjestöverkostoja vaatien itäisen Keski-Euroopan neuvostomallisten ydinvoimaloiden välitöntä sulkemista. Siten Ignalinan tapaus aiheuttaa monissa tapauksissa järjestöidentiteetin epävarmuutta: Yhtäältä ympäristöjärjestöidentiteetti vaatii kriittistä suhtautumista ydinvoimaan, erityisesti neuvostomallisiin RBMK-reaktoreihin. Toisaalta taas Ignalinan ydinvoimala koetaan Liettuan taloudellisen ja poliittisen omavaraisuuden takaajaksi. Ignalinan tapauksen ympärille rakentuva identiteettipoliittinen asetelma voidaan yksinkertaistaa tilanteeksi, jossa ympäristöjärjestöt hapuilevat kahden yhteensopimattoman toimintamallin välillä: järjestöt toivovat voivansa toteuttaa rooliaan ympäristöjärjestöinä, usein laajempien eurooppalaisten ympäristöjärjestöverkostojen mallin mukaisesti, mutta samalla kansallisen suvereniteettipolitiikan tuottamat mallit ovat vahvasti läsnä järjestöjen määrittäessä perusluonnettaan. Ignalinan tapauksen pohjalta tutkimuksessa tarkastellaan myös laajempia Euroopan integraatioon ja jälkikommunistiseen kansalaisjärjestötoimintaan liittyviä kehityskulkuja. Tutkimus tuo esiin, että Euroopan integraatio on luonut monitasoisen institutionaalisen järjestyksen, joka määrittää oman vaikutuspiirinsä säännöt. Euroopan integraatio on samalla ilmiö, joka toteutuu myös hyvin arkipäiväisissä asioissa ­ se on läsnä monissa mikrotason käytännöissä vaikuttaen siis myös ympäristöjärjestöjen toimintaan. Samalla voidaan havaita, että politiikan muodot ja tyylit eivät synny tyhjiössä tai pelkästään rationaalisten valintojen tuloksena; historia, sen tuottamat tulkinnat sekä rutiineihin perustuvat säännönmukaisuudet ovat läsnä poliittisessa elämässä, niin kansalaisjärjestötoiminnassa kuin muussakin yhteiskunnallisessa aktivismissa, samoin kuin hallinnollisissa käytännöissä. ; The colourful, sometimes even dramatic, history of Lithuanian environmental non-governmental organisations (NGOs) makes them an interesting subject of political science research. During the past fifteen years the role of the Lithuanian environmental movement has changed quite radically. The environmental movement had a central political role at the time of the Lithuanian independence activism in the late 1980s, but the movement later lost its mobilising potential and was marginalised by the beginning of the 1990s. Since then the environmental NGOs have been strongly affected by the process of European integration. Environmental NGOs have served both as agents and indicators of the institutional change taking place in Lithuania. The dynamics of this change can be analysed through the case of Ignalina ­ in the course of the past couple of decades the nuclear power plant of Ignalina in the north-east corner of Lithuania has been a reference point for a number of political discussions and processes. During the Lithuanian independence movement the nuclear power plant became a symbol of Soviet rule. As Ignalina was strongly associated with the hegemony of Moscow over Lithuania the plant occupied a central role in the fight towards national sovereignty. Independence activism took the form of environmental protests, especially in the early stages of the Lithuanian reform movement, and a large number of environmental organisations were established all over Lithuania. The political context provided an opportunity to address sensitive political questions through environmental activism. For instance, in September 1988 thousands of protesters formed a human chain ­ the ring of life ­ around the two units of Ignalina as a manifestation of Lithuanian national sovereignty and identity. The symbolic position of Ignalina changed radically after Lithuania s independence declaration in March 1990. As Moscow imposed an energy embargo on Lithuania it soon became clear that the country was dependent on its own sources of energy, of which the nuclear power plant of Ignalina was the most important one. Although Ignalina had only recently served as the symbol of Soviet oppression, the plant suddenly proved indispensable in the reconstruction of the nation and its material well-being. In 1995 the Lithuanian government tabled a EU membership application. Towards the end of the decade Ignalina was brought on the political agenda of the EU ­ it soon became evident to Lithuanians that the closure of the nuclear power plant would be considered a de facto prerequisite for EU membership. As a result, the question of Ignalina was highly politicised ­ the setting gave Ignalina a positions as the symbol of national sovereignty. There had been a radical shift in the political symbolism surrounding the plant. Meanwhile, the environmental NGOs faced a dilemma: Some of the environmental activists were closely linked to European anti-nuclear NGO networks and were strongly in favour of the decommissioning of Ignalina. However, many of the environmental NGOs also carried with them a long tradition of ethno-cultural thinking thus connecting the organisations closely to the notion of Lithuanian national sovereignty. Against this background it proved difficult for many organisations to define their role in view with the question of Ignalina ­ what would be appropriate political action? As a result, there remained a great deal of indecisiveness and confusion among the environmental NGOs as to the decommissioning plans of Ignalina, and more generally as to the role of the environmental organisations in the Lithuanian society. The case of Ignalina provides a framework within which it is possible to analyse certain dimensions of national sovereignty in an integrating, post-Cold War Europe. The integration of Central and Eastern Europe into the EU has produced a situation in which many of the expectations attached to national sovereignty are being challenged. The research also brings forward a topic that has received only limited attention in the past, namely the effects of European integration on non-governmental organisations in Central and Eastern Europe. By focusing on a specific sector of Lithuanian NGO activity it is possible to analyse the dynamics of europeanisation on a very concrete level. The case of Ignalina suggests that the activists of Lithuanian environmental NGOs are forced to ponder the raison d être of their organisations in the face of different, often conflicting institutional pressures. The expectations drawn from fresh national sovereignty are not always compatible with the models of action produced by the European integration process. The case evidences a conflict between post-Communist nation-building and the institutional limitations brought about by EU membership. Simply put, the idea of national sovereignty on the one hand and European integration on the other offer environmental NGOs distinctive, often conflicting, models of appropriate political action. The models of action created by the institutional framework of the EU are not easily compatible with the norms typical of a newly independent state. This identity political conflict is especially pronounced whenever national and European norms are placed in direct opposition with each other. However, it should be noted that the national and European levels of politics cannot be completely distinguished from each other. It is interesting to notice how models of action drawn from the EU system often form the very basis of national or local political action. Therefore it can be stated that the separation between European and national models of appropriate action is not always feasible. It is possible to approach most political questions, including the encounter of Lithuanian environmental NGOs and the EU, from an institutional perspective. The theoretical framework of the study is based on new institutionalism , and the notion of logic of appropriateness is central to the study ­ political institutions are analysed as collections of norms that define the rules of appropriate political action in different situations. In essence, politics is about appropriate action. The research seeks to explain the logic of appropriateness being followed by Lithuanian environmental NGOs. The research problem is approached through a set of questions: (1) How does the colourful history of the Lithuanian environmental movement affect the political characteristics of today s environmental NGOs? (2) What does the specific case of Ignalina tell us about the institutional contexts in which the Lithuanian environmental NGOs operate? (3) How to define the relationship between Lithuanian environmental NGOs and the politics of national sovereignty? (4) What is the relevance of the institutional framework of the EU to Lithuanian environmental NGOs? The study suggests that the rules of appropriateness change depending on the political context. At the same time, the conflicts produced by differing, overlapping institutional environments are reflected in the inner dynamics of political actors, resulting to indecisiveness and confusion. Since political action is first and foremost directed by the logic of appropriateness, the interpretations of political contexts are of central relevance. Therefore it is possible that a single object, such as a nuclear power plant, can be given a variety of interpretations in the realm of identity politics. The case of Ignalina evidences that symbolism and interpretation form the core of political life.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Nassia Yakovaki, The «Traité des trois imposteurs)) and the European Enlightenment The aim of this article is to present the obscure but fascinating story of the production and diffusion of the Traité des trois imposteurs, the best seller of the clandestine literature in Europe during the first half of the 18th century and to discuss the new and to some extent controversial interpretations that the study of this text has provoked as far as the understanding of the European Enlightenment is concerned. The importance of this text derives, first of all, from its subversive ideas: it offers a bold and straightforward attack on all three monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and Islam) by rejecting the principle of revelation and by pronouncing their founders as «impostors», while attributing the appearance of organized religions to political interests. Yet, the significance of this text goes beyond its content: the conditions of its production as well as of its circulation offer to modern historical research the chance to explore an «underground universe», peopled by relatively unknown figures, working among the middlemen of the publishing world. These circles —as it seems— had the readiness to respond creatively to a turbulent religious and political environment, to adopt rigid philosophical stands and to step into radical politics. Historical research has recently succeeded in investigating the complicated issues of the origin, dating, authorship and circulation of this notorious text and in disentangling the thread connecting this late 17th century production with the medieval legend of the «imposture». Crucial among these findings is on the one hand the bond that links the Traité with the works of Spinoza and on the other the connection between the production of the text and a group of people in late 17th and early 18th century Holland. The interesting questions concerning the general understanding of the era of «the crisis of the European consciousness» that the historical scholarship about the Traité has raised have already led to the formation of a new, stimulating, yet controversial historiographical trend which elaborates a new interpretation of the Enlightenment, around the idea of an early and radical Enlightenment (Margaret Jacob, 1981 and 2003, Jonathan Israel, 2001).

Ex ante assessment of regulatory impact upon businesses: A neo-institutional study on the context, international influences, and Finnish experiences Regulatory impact assessment (RIA) has an established place in the European Union and its member states. This article considers evolving Finnish ex ante RIA concerning certain regulatory costs to firms. Drawing upon a neo-institutional theoretical framework and proposing three generally oriented hypotheses we received the following results. (1) The rationality of theevolving Finnish ex ante RIA of selected administrativeregulatory costs to firms gives rise issuesgiven the low implementation rate of thegeneral natonal RIA guidelines. (2) Reference to the ex ante RIA of regulatory costs to firmsin other countries has served the legitimation of preferred procedures in Finland rather than offerssolid evidence on the rationality of the foreign procedures. (3) Without a stronger contextualization of the evolving Finnish ex ante RIAmof regulatory costs to firms its procedures risk adverse effects because of their confined scope, the uneven quality of their input data, and their weak connections to the general national ex ante RIA. These results suggest the redesign of the Finnish RIA to take better into account the institutional, political, historical and cultural characteristicsof governance in this country. Keywords: regulatory impact assessment, public policy evaluation, public policymaking, lawmaking, legal policy, deregulation ; Peer reviewed

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Yiannis Papatheodorou, a The cruel April of 1944»: Fiction, History and Memory in Straus Tsirkas's Drifting Cities Stratis Tsirkas, a distinguished Greek diaspora novelist in Egypt, published his important and controversial trilogy {The Club, Ariagne, The Bat), in the early '60s. The novel is situated in three colonial Mediterranean cities —Jerusalem, Cairo and Alexandria— drifting towards chaos in a war-torn Middle East, during 1942-1944. As far as the plot is concerned, the trilogy is inscribed to the wider context of postwar European literary «master-narratives» elaborating representations of war, Nazism and resistance, and also opening an agenda to the traumatic phenomena of a discontinuous modernity: violence, social repression, exclusion of the Other. This article discusses the politics of history and memory in Stratis Tsirkas's trilogy Drifting Cities in order to show how he problematizes the tropes of historical representation in a dialogical perspective, by focalizing to the Greek military left underground «movement of April 1944». His historical point of view, which clearly can be identified as the «return of the repressed», is related to the questions of an alternative narration about the past, enriched within a critical and deliberating interpretation of the left collective memory.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Photini Danou, The words of the voiceless Did ordinary men and women in pre-modern England have an opinion about politics? What was "politics" for the common people at a time when they had not any say in choosing who would rule them? Was popular engagement in state politics only to secure subsistence? Were "knife and fork" politics of the masses so separate from issues of "high politics" of the State? Was pre-modern commoners' mentality, "pre-political" as well? This paper discusses early modern popular political awareness. I argue that commoners in Tudor England pursued their own political agenda, by exploiting the sovereign's self-image as the "protector of the poor". However, as I set out to show, in pursuing their political agenda commoners also raised issues on the content of Englishness, common good, patriotism, legitimate governance and the right of resistance. The political identity of the lower strata was not an entity fixed in its essence. On the contrary, plebeian political identity was rather shifting, changeable, and always constituting its content in particular historical contexts. The commoners' commitment to the ideal of the"nation", their loyalty to the government, their allegiance to their Queen, their obedience to her laws, or their active participation in the enforcement of state policies were not unconditional. The ways they practiced their political identity was interrelated to their superiors' behavior and draw its legitimacy from the public transcript of the English Common wealth. Common prosperity, reciprocity, solidarity and, in general, protection of the poorer and weaker members of English society were ideals that constituted the meaning of "common wealth" in the plebeian mind. Those ideals were prerequisites for their giving of devotion and loyalty to the state. Thus, the commoners' political mentality and behavior ranged from national loyalty to indifference or even animosity to state officials; from cooperation and acquiescence to covered or overt forms of opposition and active resistance.

Δεν παρατίθεται περἰληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Lina Venturas – Dimitria Groutsis, The Cold War and international migration regulation: The establishment of the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration The immediate post WWII period saw the establishment of the Inter-governmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM) (now International Organisation for Migration, IOM), as a key organisation in the management of post WWII migration. This paper examines the debates and policies surrounding the creation of the ICEM as an agent responsible for the facilitation and administration of labour migration from parts of Europe to a variety of overseas countries. At the conclusion of the Second World War, the problems surrounding 'surplus population' and unemployment in Europe were discussed in many international forums. It was from these discussions that a consensus emerged which saw emigration as a viable solution. To this end, in 1951, the International Labour Organisation convened a Migration Conference in Naples, bringing together key stakeholders. The Naples Conference failed, an outcome driven mainly by the US. The US was particularly concerned with economic stagnation and mounting social unrest related to the 'surplus population' in European countries in this Cold War period. At the same time however, it strived at limiting international influence over migration and refugee policies and on receiving countries retaining their sovereign immigration policies. In spite of the disagreements and through a process of negotiation, the US subsequently led the creation of an intergovernmental body, which was established at a conference convened in Brussels in 1951. This newly formed organisation, initially named the Provisional Intergovernmental Committee for the Movement of Migrants from Europe (PICMME), was open only to states with a 'liberal' political regime and had specifically designed functions based on inter-governmental negotiations. The US ensured its predominance in the organization through budgetary control and other means. In 1953, the PICMME became a permanent 'fixture' of migration regulation and was renamed the Intergovernmental Committee for European Migration (ICEM). Hereafter, ICEM offered operational and financial assistance for migrants' transportation, language training, reception facilities, settlement services and labour market placement.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Eleni Fournaraki, «Wherefore deprive her of the vote?». Universal male suffrage and the exclusion of women from politics in 19th century Greece Through study of the Greek case, this article tries to explore the exclusion of women from political rights in the context of liberal democracy as a historiographical problem. In contrast to the vast majority of representative states at the time, political circumstances prevailing in Greece led to the constitutional establishment of universal male suffrage in 1864, though not without provoking the discontent of a sizeable portion of the political scene for several years thereafter. According to «conventional» historical accounts, there can be no doubt that women's exclusion from «universal suffrage» in 1864, while not explicity articulated in the Constitution or any pertinent legislation, was regarded as self-evident. Furthermore, prior to 1910-20 the possibility of attributing the vote to women did not preoccupy party politics, while a suffragist movement did not appear before the Inter-war period. Our own approach can be summarized as follows: exploration of the meaning of women's exclusion from political rights in a democratic conjuncture that assured those rights to all adult men may reveal the full dimensions of the conflict dynamic that democratic conquests presuppose. In the first place, this dynamic applies to men themselves, or more precisely to the less privileged among them. As empirical data reveal, the question of women's political rights, even if acquiring those rights was not an existing possibility, could appear as a constructive element of the political discourse: women's exclusion could have been put forward as one of the issues in the argument against universal male suffrage. It is precisely the self-evident and trivial nature of this exclusion together with that of children which could offer a more convincing argument against the conception of suffrage as a natural right. A lack of internal coherence and consistency in the argument of the advocates of «universal suffrage», could be pointed out through the emphasis, conversely, on the irrationality of a regime that guaranteed political participation down to the very last «illiterate» or «vagrant» man, while depriving all women of the vote, especially those who had the ability to possess and administrate property. Support for suffrage for those women was not totally absent from such argumentation, which served to reveal the contradictions that women's exclusion from political rights brought to the heart of the modern system for the legitimization of sovereignty. Through examination of the arguments employed by the science of constitutional law to justify exclusion, we observe a broader process of redefinition and rationalization of the existing gender hierarchy, in modern terms. Crystallized in the last quarter of 19th century, this process appealed to the notion of the biological and psychological «specificity» of «female nature)) in order to legitimize the incompatibility of women as a whole with politics.

Konstantinos Katsoudas, "A Dictatorship that is not a Dictatorship". Spanish Nationalists and the 4th of August The Spanish Civil War convulsed the international public opinion and prompted most foreign governments to take measures or even intervene in the conflict. Greek entanglement either in the form of smuggling war materiel or the participation of Greek volunteers in the International Brigades has already been investigated. However, little is known about a second dimension of this internationalization of the war: the peculiar forms that the antagonism between the two belligerent camps in foreign countries took. This paper, based mainly on Spanish archival sources, discusses some aspects of the activity developed in Greece by Franco's nationalists and the way Francoist diplomats and emissaries perceived the nature of an apparently similar regime, such as the dictatorship led by general Metaxas. The main objectives of the Francoist foreign policy were to avoid any escalation of the Spanish civil war into a world conflict, to secure international assistance for the right-wing forces and to undermine the legitimacy of the legal Republican government. In Greece, an informal diplomatic civil war broke out since Francoists occupied the Spanish Legation in Athens and Republicans took over the Consulate in Thessaloniki. The Francoists combined public and undercover activity: they worked hard to achieve an official recognition of their Estado Nuevo, while at the same time created rings of espionage and channels of anticommunist propaganda. The reason of their partial breakthroughs was that, contrary to their Republican enemies, the Nationalists enjoyed support by a significant part of the Greek political world, which was ideologically identified with their struggle. Francoist anti-communism had some interesting implications for Greek politics. An important issue was the Francoist effort to reveal a supposed Moscow-based conspiracy against Spain and Greece, both considered as hotbeds of revolution in the Mediterranean, in order to justify both Franco's extermination campaign and Metaxas' coup. Although this effort was based on fraudulent documents, forged by an anti-Bolshevik international organization, it became the cornerstone of Francoist and Metaxist propaganda. General Metaxas was the only European dictator to invoke the Spanish Civil War as a raison d'etre of his regime and often warned against the repetition of Spanish-like drama on Greek soil. Nevertheless he did not approve of Franco's methods and preferred Dr. Salazar's Portugal as an institutional model closer to his vision. For Spanish nationalist observers this was a sign of weakness. They interpreted events in Greece through the disfiguring mirror of their own historic experience: thus, although they never called in question Metaxas' authoritarian motives, the 4th of August regime was considered too mild and soft compared to Francoism (whose combativeness and fanaticism, as they suggested, the Greek General should have imitated); it reminded them the dictatorship founded in Spain by General Primo de Rivera in 1920s, whose inadequacy paved the way for the advent of the Republic and the emergence of sociopolitical radicalism. Incidents of the following years, as Greece moved towards a civil confrontation, seemed to strengthen their views. ; Konstantinos Katsoudas, "A Dictatorship that is not a Dictatorship". Spanish Nationalists and the 4th of AugustThe Spanish Civil War convulsed the international public opinion and prompted most foreign governments to take measures or even intervene in the conflict. Greek entanglement either in the form of smuggling war materiel or the participation of Greek volunteers in the International Brigades has already been investigated. However, little is known about a second dimension of this internationalization of the war: the peculiar forms that the antagonism between the two belligerent camps in foreign countries took. This paper, based mainly on Spanish archival sources, discusses some aspects of the activity developed in Greece by Franco's nationalists and the way Francoist diplomats and emissaries perceived the nature of an apparently similar regime, such as the dictatorship led by general Metaxas. The main objectives of the Francoist foreign policy were to avoid any escalation of the Spanish civil war into a world conflict, to secure international assistance for the right-wing forces and to undermine the legitimacy of the legal Republican government. In Greece, an informal diplomatic civil war broke out since Francoists occupied the Spanish Legation in Athens and Republicans took over the Consulate in Thessaloniki. The Francoists combined public and undercover activity: they worked hard to achieve an official recognition of their Estado Nuevo, while at the same time created rings of espionage and channels of anticommunist propaganda. The reason of their partial breakthroughs was that, contrary to their Republican enemies, the Nationalists enjoyed support by a significant part of the Greek political world, which was ideologically identified with their struggle. Francoist anti-communism had some interesting implications for Greek politics. An important issue was the Francoist effort to reveal a supposed Moscow-based conspiracy against Spain and Greece, both considered as hotbeds of revolution in the Mediterranean, in order to justify both Franco's extermination campaign and Metaxas' coup. Although this effort was based on fraudulent documents, forged by an anti-Bolshevik international organization, it became the cornerstone of Francoist and Metaxist propaganda. General Metaxas was the only European dictator to invoke the Spanish Civil War as a raison d'etre of his regime and often warned against the repetition of Spanish-like drama on Greek soil. Nevertheless he did not approve of Franco's methods and preferred Dr. Salazar's Portugal as an institutional model closer to his vision. For Spanish nationalist observers this was a sign of weakness. They interpreted events in Greece through the disfiguring mirror of their own historic experience: thus, although they never called in question Metaxas' authoritarian motives, the 4th of August regime was considered too mild and soft compared to Francoism (whose combativeness and fanaticism, as they suggested, the Greek General should have imitated); it reminded them the dictatorship founded in Spain by General Primo de Rivera in 1920s, whose inadequacy paved the way for the advent of the Republic and the emergence of sociopolitical radicalism. Incidents of the following years, as Greece moved towards a civil confrontation, seemed to strengthen their views.

Väitöstutkimus analysoi julkisia poliittisia performansseja poliittisena viestintänä. Poliittiset performanssit voidaan ymmärtää julkisissa tiloissa toimeen pantuina 'näytöksinä', joiden tavoitteena on luoda arkisiin rutiineihin yllättäviä katkoksia ja synnyttää uutta toimintatilaa jonkin yhteiskunnallisen ongelman esiin nostamiseksi. Performanssit synnyttävät katkoksia monin tavoin, mutta erityisen leimallista niille on näkyvän, vallalla olevan visuaalisen järjestyksen murtaminen tuomalla siihen erilaisia 'häiritseviä' (disruptive) elementtejä: resistoivia kehoja, valtaa parodioivia kuvia, karnevalistista protestointia, katuteatteria jne. Poliittisten performanssien viestintä perustuu puheen sijaan tai ohella toimijoiden oman kehon ja sen kantamien erilaisten visuaalisten merkkien julkiseen esittämiseen, joskus hyvin äärimmäisellä tavalla, kuten esimerkiksi nälkälakoissa ja polttoitsemurhissa. Väitöskirjassa tällaista viestintätyyliä kutsutaan visuaaliseksi ja esteettiseksi politikoinniksi. Tutkimuksessa analysoidaan useita esimerkkejä performatiivisesta poliittisesta viestinnästä ja kehitetään teoreettisia ideoita sen ominaispiirteiden tulkitsemiseksi. ; In this doctoral thesis I study a phenomenon which I have titled as public political performance. By public political performance I refer to a public event (a 'show', display, demonstration) the purpose of which is to expose in public and challenge those social-political norms, practices, and relations of power which usually remain invisible in the sway of routine political life. I am interested especially in how performance works as a form of non-linguistic, or wider than linguistic, political communication. I theorize and analyze, through several illustrative examples, performances from three perspectives: as corporeal (bodily), visual, and aesthetic communication. In construction of theory I use and partly rework ideas from thinkers such as Jürgen Habermas, Michel Foucault, Hannah Arendt, Maurice Merleau-Ponty, and Jacques Ranciere. The study shows that public political performance is a sensitive, even volatile phenomenon because it often manifestly exposes the fundamentally violent power structure of society – as when, for example, street demonstrations induce strong counter reactions from the police and political authorities – and puts this order under critical public scrutiny. Political authorities do not take such challenges lightly, which is why public performances sometimes instigate serious political controversies. The key theoretical ideas of the study relate to performance as something done and en/acted. On the one hand, performance discloses the nature of politics as a 'doing.' This means in simple terms that, in order to subsist, the political world needs to be done, performed, and 'iterated,' every time anew. The term performative describes this social-constructivist side of politics. That the constitution of the social and political power is based not on any 'natural' ground but on continuous re/iteration of certain ways and routines is often revealed only when it is visibly and noticeably disrupted. This is what political performance typically does. On the other hand, performance signifies a particular kind of public show which resembles but does not equal theatrical shows. Performance is theatrical in being an 'art-like' communicative act, yet it is more surprising and unpredictable compared to regular theatre and, because of this, usually more difficult to approach and interpret. Political performance as a contingent and sometimes oddly appearing public event with a surprise effect brings forth the importance of disruption for politics. It alerts us to situations where the normalized political performatives are being visibly questioned by bringing into public space – 'in your face' – diverse disrupting elements like resisting bodies, parodying images, and carnevalism. The relationship between these two, performatives and performances, creates an edgy and 'chiasmatic' political space from which much of political life gains its driving force. This basic idea and relationship constitute the key starting point for this study's theoretical reflections. Political performance is an important subject for political studies for several reasons. The purely knowledge-based reason is that that in directing attention to the corporeal and visual aspects of politics and political communication, performance brings into view phenomena and conceptual possibilities which are too often ignored by political researchers and theorists. The relevance of performance for the field can also be justified from another perspective, through reference to its political and democratic significance. The discussions and analyses carried out in the study show that there are political circumstances where citizens see public performance as the only available means of participation in political communication, with other channels of communication forbidden or marginalized. There are also situations where citizens create, through setting up a performance, space for public communication and action where it has not existed before. Political performance as a way of contesting existing political realities can therefore have special value for political freedom. Political and democratic theory needs to understand, I shall argue, also that category of political action which performs political freedom rather than asks for it.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; Kostas Raptis, Merchants in Imperial Austria during the 'Long' Nine­teenth Century This article, which draws mainly on the Archives of the Austrian Ministry of Commerce, as well as on contemporary works and modern li­ terature, focuses on the examination of the historical course of merchants (above all the whole sale traders and the well suited shopkeepers and retail merchants) in Old Austria as a distinctive group within the Central European bourgeoisie. The contribution of the merchant­magnates (Großhändler) to the industrialization of the Austrian Half of the Habsburg Empire and the formation of a powerful business class, the importance of the involvement of businessmen from abroad in Austrian wholesale and foreign trade, the grip of the state and imperial allegiance in the commercial sector, the social position and the political activity of merchants– primarily at local and regional levels –as well as the attitudes of the multi­ethnic merchant class towards all kinds of nationalist movements in the late nineteenth and the early twentieth centuries, are the central issues of this essay. Merchant­magnates, among whom many of foreign provenance or/ and not of Catholic faith (Protestants, Jews and Greek­orthodox) established themselves as the most active entrepreneurial group within the Austrian bourgeoisie during most of the nineteenth century (at least until the 1870s), since they exploited promptly every new opportunity to accumulate and augment their capital and income: in industry, banking, insurance and other share­holding companies, transport, shipping and real estate. The bourgeois status of the Austrian merchants is confirmed for the same period by their participation in all sorts of (bourgeois) associations, their subscription to public benefit causes, their charitable and philanthropic activities. The imperial state's favorable disposition towards entrepreneurs in general and merchants in particular, its recognition and reward of their contribution to the Austrian economy and export trade, of their mercantile knowledge and professional experience, as well as of their charity and philanthropic work, are documented in the appointment of honorary consuls of Austria abroad or of consuls of foreign states in the capital and cities of the Monarchy, the conferring of the highest social distinctions on merchants by Emperor Franz Joseph through award of medals, honorary titles and titles of nobility or the merchants' collaboration with the Ministry of Commerce as elected members and officials of chambers of commerce, as experts, special advisers and commission agents. In addition to the merchants' indirect relations with politics there were direct ones too, in other words their active participation as elected representatives, primarily to municipal councils and secondarily to the local and imperial parliaments of Austria after the constitutional reforms of 1860­1861. During the so­called era of liberalism, from the 1860s up to the mid­1880's, it was mainly german­speaking merchants, who, together with industrialists and other middle class groups, dominated in most towns, whereas in the three decades which preceded the First World War –an era of increasing anti­semitism and nationalism– they had to share power with new emerging petit­bourgeois strata (among them many shopkeepers). The article concludes with a remark on the upheavals caused to the merchant world by the two World Wars and national­socialism, which destroyed the unified economic space of Austria­Hungary, nationalized its cosmopolitan bourgeoisie and finally led to the expulsion, material depravation or/and extermination of such a dynamic and prominent group, like the Jewish merchants and entrepreneurs, followed by the abolition of the capitalist economy by the new socialist regimes in Central and East­Central Europe after 1945.

Δεν παρατίθεται περίληψη στα ελληνικά. ; This paper discusses the politics of historical interpretation as manifested in E. P. Thompson's The Making of the English Working Class. The discussion addresses two main areas of interest:a. The structure of the conceptual framework that organises historical narration and grounds historical analysis and interpretation. It is argued that this framework is based on his insistence on the privileged character of historiography as a field of knowledge and as a critical perspective for social and political perspective on the one hand. The conceptual framework also consists of Thompson's conviction that in the process of class formation experience is the sine qua non historical catalyst that intervenes between the social being (modes of production) and class consciousness. These analytical inclinations are explored with reference to Thompson's engagement with the discussion over marxist reductionism on the one hand, and althusserian structuralism on the other.b. Finally, an attempt is made to trace the particularities of the historical context within which Thompson's perspective was shaped, as well as the influence that his work has had on the orientations of social studies during the period of the 1970s and 1980s.