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In May 1958, and four years into the Algerian War of Independence, a revolt again appropriated the revolutionary and republican symbolism of the French Revolution by seizing power through a Committee of Public Safety. This book explores why a repressive colonial system that had for over a century maintained the material and intellectual backwardness of Algerian women now turned to an extensive programme of 'emancipation'. After a brief background sketch of the situation of Algerian women during the post-war decade, it discusses the various factors contributed to the emergence of the first significant women's organisations in the main urban centres. It was only after the outbreak of the rebellion in 1954 and the arrival of many hundreds of wives of army officers that the model of female interventionism became dramatically activated. The French military intervention in Algeria during 1954-1962 derived its force from the Orientalist current in European colonialism and also seemed to foreshadow the revival of global Islamophobia after 1979 and the eventual moves to 'liberate' Muslim societies by US-led neo-imperialism in Afghanistan and Iraq. For the women of Bordj Okhriss, as throughout Algeria, the French army represented a dangerous and powerful force associated with mass destruction, brutality and rape. The central contradiction facing the mobile socio-medical teams teams was how to gain the trust of Algerian women and to bring them social progress and emancipation when they themselves were part of an army that had destroyed their villages and driven them into refugee camps.
offer European politics. In the context of the debate on the futures of European order, Blair’s construction of the Kosovo war may be seen as an illustration of Samuel Huntington’s scenario of some forthcoming ‘clash of civilisations’. 3 Was Blair not arguing that, while war has ceased to be a means of politics in the relations between Western states, the West’s relations with other
Jerneck 1996: 12). The contrast is with a ‘voting democracy’. In his introduction to a special issue of the journal West European Politics on ‘Understanding the Swedish Model’, Jan-Erik Lane asserts that ‘the Swedish model … comprises a set of concepts and ideas about what good government is’ (Lane 1991: 1). It can reasonably be inferred from this that if negotiation is a central concept in a notion of good government in Sweden, it should be viewed as both process and norm – what does happen and what should happen. Equally, the process of bargaining and negotiation has
, with CNN trying to explain ‘why that’s so controversial’. But those headlines do capture the profound repercussions of the rise of a party that is such an anomaly in the European political context. Of course, the unmistakable left-turn that the electorate was signalling by voting for a party that put forward a programme for radical change in terms of social policy was noteworthy in a country that had until then seemed comfortable with a neoliberal and rather conservative agenda. Similarly, the party’s very history and its
, their work culminated in a challenging question. Is American exceptionalism a foretaste of what is awaiting the European political scene, rather than an anomalous situation in the midst of the advanced capitalist societies? This provocative hypothesis was based on the experiences with the ‘Third Way’ during the 1990s but its credibility has apparently not been undermined by the present situation. Democratic socialism has seriously failed to triumph in the ‘Old World’, even though the workers’ movement came into being there and this is where a new ‘major crisis’ of
of Government and State of the European Economic Community, the member governments decided to enter the process for building the 62 Major issues and themes European Political Co-operation, also known as EPC, that is, the process towards the common foreign, security, and later on defence policy. At the same time, the Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe (CSCE), the so-called Helsinki Process, overturned the politics of the entire European region by transforming the relations between the two political and military blocs and de-freezing of the Cold War
monarchie (1551) and the Second Part of Urania. During this period, punctuated by wars between Christian and Muslim, Catholic and Protestant, European erotic romance played its part in shaping European politics and nationalist culture. Its strong chivalric element promoted notions of responsible monarchy and intolerance of tyranny, feeding the discontent with bullying and
, 1945–2007’, paper presented at the Political Studies Association, Annual Conference, University of Bath, April. Bale, Tim (2003) ‘Cinderella and her ugly sisters: the mainstream and extreme right in Europe’s bipolarising party systems’, West European Politics, 26 (3), pp. 67–90. Elff, Martin (2007) ‘Social structure and electoral behavior in comparative perspective: the decline of social cleavages in western Europe revisited’, Perspectives on Politics, 5 (2), pp. 277–94. Esping-Andersen, Gøsta (1985) Politics Against Markets. The Social Democratic Road to Power
shortly after. Yet this pattern is somewhat falsified by the fact that referendums have also taken place in, inter alia, • Italy, where a referendum on a shift from List PR to MMP was held in 1993, and where a number of referendums on modifications have been held (in 1999 and 2009); • Romania (where President Băsescu’s proposal to establish parliamentary elections in single-member constituencies was rejected due to a low turnout in 2007);6 LeDuc (2011) ‘Electoral Reform and Direct Democracy in Canada: When Citizens Become Involved’, West European Politics, Vol. 34
(2) and 15(2), relating to European political parties and freedom of movement respectively.14 Since the legal creation of EU citizenship in 1992 some progress has been made along each of the policy fronts indicated. Electoral rights have been eased.15 Steady progress was made with respect to the freedom of movement and residence provisions until 200116 when they were substantially boosted by the adoption in April 2004 of Directive 2004/38/EC, which among other changes creates for EU citizens an unconditional permanent right of residence in another member state.17