Suchergebnisse

The wave of protests that, starting from the end of 2010, hit some countries in the Middle- East North-Africa region, leading to the fall of long-standing autocratic regimes and referred to as the Arab Spring, has renewed the interests of researchers on youth bulges. The youth bulge theory links the demographic transition to political instability, by asserting that countries characterized by a particularly young population tend to be more vulnerable to political violence. The aim of the thesis is to test empirically this hypothesis on a sample of 160 countries in the post-World War II period. For this purpose, we adopt an econometric strategy alternative to the one prevailing in the literature on the determinants of civil conflicts: we employ a simple linear regression model which accounts for country and time fixed effects.

In this article I provide an appraisal of the neo-Gramscian approach to the study of international relations by focusing on three of its major exponents: Robert Cox, Stephen Gill and Adam Morton. I argue that neo-Gramscians have yet to adequately address some important challenges and criticisms of their method around its overly "top-down" mode of analysis, its neglect of forms of resistance and its excessively global and cosmopolitan account of neoliberal hegemony and especially resistance. I maintain that a return to the letter of Gramsci's writings on hegemony and its national-popular and democratic character would not only allow neo-Gramscians to address more effectively these weaknesses, but also strengthen their approach and align it more effectively with trends in contemporary politics.Keywords: Gramsci; International Relations; Hegemony; National-Popular.

The Gramscian thinking has been increasingly used in the fields of Political Science and International Relations, however, prioritizing its concept of hegemony. In this article, it is proposed both, a more accurate elucidation and a possible transposition of the concept of the historical bloc to the international scenario, having as the main question the following study inquiry: can we transpose the concept of the historical bloc developed by Gramsci for International Relations of the 21st century, taking into account its transnational nature? Methodologically, a deductive, qualitative approach is used, with a literature review based on data collection from secondary sources. It is understood that the notion of the historical bloc coined by Gramsci, followed by the assumptions of critical theorists, helps us to understand the difficulties of the current international relations. The versatility of this concept allows us to endorse a macro view of the many facets of International Relations, whether they are linked to the political, economic, social, and even ideological spheres. Gramsci; Transnational Historical Bloc; International Relations; Hegemony; Critical Theory.

For ages economists, philosophers, historians, political scientists and many other thinkers and scholars have argued about the connections between world economy and international relations. Within this broad subject, two related and prolific debates exist: the possible peacekeeping or warmongering effects of trade and, inversely, the influences of warfare and peace on commerce. The present dissertation introduces a theoretical and empirical assessment about the interdependence between international trade and interstate conflict. In particular, a causal perspective on the issue is adopted. The first part presents the most renown theories about trade and conflict, trying to extrapolate the alleged casual linkages behind them. In the second part, a detailed review of the previous empirical studies is provided. Furthermore, an empirical analysis on the interdependence between international trade and militarized interstate disputes (MIDs) is attempted employing a vector autoregression (VAR) model. Finally, personal considerations about the examined arguments conclude the thesis.

This volume contains the results of some studies presented by Egyptian and Italian scholars at the International Conference "Peacebuilding between East and West XI-XVI c.", organized in Cairo on, October 27, 2016 by the Egyptian Unity of research, as part of the academic activities of the Bilateral Project "History of Peace-building: peaceful relations between East and West (11th - 15th century)" carried out jointly by the Institute of the Mediterranean EuropeHistory of the CNR (Italy), and the University of Damanhour. The project is totally funded by the Academy of Scientific Research and Technology (ASRT)(1) of the Arab Republic of Egypt and the Italian National Research Council (CNR)(2).The purpose of the Bilateral Project - and even of the aforementioned International Conference- is to carry out research in order to examine through the study of different types of documentary and narrative sources; the nature, quantity and quality of peaceful relations between Christians and Muslims in a geographical area extending from the Iberian Peninsula to the Levantin a chronological interval between the eleventh and the fifteenth centuries. Needless to say that since it is an Italian-Egyptian project, the researchers will devote particular attention in their studies to the relations between these two geographical areas.In this book, we can find the first contributions of some scholars of the two Research Units on the important theme of the complex relationships between the Christian world and the Islamic one, which characterized almost all the Middle Ages and much of the Modern Age in the area gravitating around the Mediterranean Sea.The researchers' aim is to focus their studies on episodes, geographical areas, persons and moments which represent incidents and cases of peaceful coexistence and connection, with fruitful exchanges of various kinds of knowledge, even in a general context characterized by military, religious and ideological-cultural conflict. ; Consiglio Nazionale delle Ricerche, Academy of Scientific Research & Technology ; editors in chief Prof. Ali Ahmed El-Sayed, Dr. Luciano Gallinari, Dr. Abdallah Abdel-Ati Al-Naggar ; Beiträge teilweise italienisch, teilweise arabisch in arabischer Schrift

The present work attempts to provide a more realistic description of international labour migration within a simple core-periphery model à-la Fujita, Krugman and Venables (1999). The choice of this benchmark model is motivated by the key role it plays in the most recent and sophisticated dynamic spatial general equilibrium model, such as the Regional Holistic model (RHOMOLO) model developed by the European Commission (EC) for simulating policy scenario related to the European Union (EU) cohesion policies and for evaluating its implications on the economies of the Member States of the Union. The first part of the work consists in a concise review of the relevant international trade theories and the main international migration theories. In the second part, after a concise description of the simple 2-region core-periphery model developed by Fujita et al. (1999), the migration law à-la Krugman (1991a) is modified to include other drivers, such as political instability and climate change in the less developed country. In the last part, the evolution of the key endogenous variables of the model will be simulated and some policy implications of the model will be discussed. This work shows that, although it has been used the simplest (and less complete) baseline model, the introduction of the sociopolitical and the environmental driver for international migration plays a key role in the dynamic spatial general equilibrium approach.

Almost twenty years have passed since the approval of the first international treaty against human trafficking, the so-called Palermo Protocol. After that, given the centrality of Europe in the last migratory flows and its historical commitment to the respect and protection of human rights, the European Union has rationalized its efforts against this tremendous crime, creating special task forces and beginning an interesting and unique data collection process. Unfortunately, such a process has not been immune from methodological problems and delay that have hampered the research and knowledge of the phenomenon. As a matter of fact, too little is still known about the determinants of trafficking in human beings within Europe and the quality and availability of data is still an issue in the field. Nevertheless, this thesis, using a novel panel dataset constructed from Eurostat statistical working papers on human trafficking, aims precisely at given a deeper insights on the factors which might explain why this phenomenon is pervasive in the European Union and what are the factors that explain high number of victims in some european countries.

This work focuses on the development of the Eurosceptic movement in three core countries: France, Italy and the United Kingdom. These nations have been characterized by a growth in the Eurosceptic idea, which culminated with the creation of new parties or with the modification of old ones, whose aim is to develop an anti-European propaganda. The most significant of these new political forces is represented by the United Kingdom Independence Party, which, with its Eurosceptic emotional discourse, has been instrumental in bringing the anti-EU sentiment in the UK to the top, till the final success of the so-called Brexit. In Italy, the Eurosceptic crusade is led by the Lega Nord, that modified its anti-Italian and regionalist discourse into an anti-European and anti-immigration one, and by the newly formed Movimento 5 Stelle. In France, the Front National is the most significant party that displays Eurosceptic sentiments, also due to its anti-immigrant and populist appeal to the masses. The emphasis of the work is put on the 2014 European Parliament elections and on how the Eurosceptic discourse of the above-mentioned parties influenced the political discourse of the old ones and the results of the elections. The empirical part of this work is conducted through a content analysis of the electoral manifestos developed for the 2014 consultation. The work is divided as it follows: in the first chapter, there is an excursus on the theory developed by numerous scholars on the Eurosceptic phenomenon and on the most important definitions to consider. Then, the work focuses on the peculiarities of each of the three nations' party system. In these chapters, there is a dissertation on the diachronic development of the Eurosceptic discourse in the party system and a discussion on the content analysis of the parties' European manifestos.

The increasing scarcity of public funds, as well as the continued efforts in improving the quality and efficiency of public services, have made the public-private partnership a legal-economic scheme more attractive both for States and for industry stakeholders. Indeed, PPPs, which were developed initially because of the public budgetary constraints, have subsequently proved its suitability in allowing the retrieval of additional resources to those strictly necessary for the basic realization of projects of general interest and to operate efficiencies of the system. From this point of view they can be considered an effect of economic globalization which identifies the increasing costs that systems must support to compete into a competitive economic arena. EU Member State Governments do not seem to longer regard themselves as having a purely national dimension in an internationalized context where every entity is more inclined to act like a market player (1) (Osborne S. P., Public–private partnerships: theory and practice in international perspective, Routledge, London, 2003), nevertheless citizens demand public services with higher quantity and quality despite being willing to pay for them a consistently lower price. As detailed in this work, the European Union does not expressly provides a definition of public-private partnership, indeed all forms relate to the works, services, supplies, shall be "positively" included in the public procurement legislation. In particular, the trend towards establishing PPPs in research & development occurred and increased in various contexts to address market failures and to benefit of different spillover effects. In comparison with other policy instruments pursuing similar goals, this one respond better to the latest trends in research and innovation processes, i.e. increased scientific content of technological development, increasing dependency on external knowledge for innovation generation, changing business R&D strategies (e.g. open innovation) and rapidly evolving social needs (2) (Guinet, J., (2005), 'Public-Private Partnerships for Research and Innovation. The experience of OECD countries', Science and Technology Policy Division, OECD, Paris (unpublished paper)). The cases analyzed, both the "JTIs" (Joint Technology Initiatives) and the "cPPPs" (Contractual Public Private Partnerships) constitute absolute specificities in the PPP general domain, first for the intrinsic characteristics of the scientific & technological research (long-term nature of returns and uncertainty of outcomes), secondly because the public operator does not act in order to obtain or provide public goods but for the pursuit of its institutional goals, such as public scientific research. They cannot be considered totally as public-private partnerships at least in terms of positive law, but our cases fall down in the atypical scheme as referred for the first time by the European Commission guidelines in 2003 when the different major categories were outlined involving more or less private sector involvement (3) (DG Regional Policy: guidelines for successful public-private partnerships, March 2003). Moreover, the private component is identified, as in classic ppp cases, not by means of public evidence but on the basis of a political-strategic selection. Original goals of this work is to make a useful reconstruction of all the European Commission PPPs in research & innovation, focusing on the behavior and performance of three cases of contractual PPPs under the framework program FP7 and Horizon 2020 managed by directorate D (Industrial Technologies) of DG Research & Innovation (RTD) in which I have been professionally involved as civil servant for the years 2014 and 2015. Due to the fact that few of the projects funded have not yet been completed and the research outputs are not yet definitive, the analysis has been carried through a qualitative approach obtaining qualitative indicators extrapolated by the previous assessments done by the Commission, primary internal department sources and successful ended projects with high impact results, unstructured interviews. The research objective is to explain their ability to be attractive for the private sector and to be an effective tool to reach the EU policy targets compared to the "no PPP option", for instance the standard framework programme (FP7 and Horizon 2020). The aspect of the "attractiveness" in particular is missing in the literature of the research PPPs elaborated, therefore this work hopes to give a contribution, even if minimum, to the efforts currently in place in the academic and management community to design and configure and ideal PPP framework for effective interaction between public institutions and market players which shall feed the service of scientific and technological research targets established at European Union policy level.