What are the consequences of globalization for the structure of political conflicts in Western Europe? How are political conflicts organized and articulated in the twenty-first century? And how does the transformation of territorial boundaries affect the scope and content of political conflicts? This book sets out to answer these questions by analyzing the results of a study of national and European electoral campaigns, protest events and public debates in six West European countries. While the mobilization of the losers (...) in the processes of globalization by new right populist parties is seen to be the driving force of the restructuring of West European politics, the book goes beyond party politics. It attempts to show how the cleavage coalitions that are shaping up under the impact of globalization extend to state actors, interest groups and social movement organizations, and how the new conflicts are framed by the various actors involved. (shrink)

I suggest that virtue ethics can learn from Foucault’s critical observations on biopolitics and governmentality, which identify how a good cannot be disassociated from power and freedom. I chart a way through which virtue ethics internalizes this critical point. I argue that this helps address concerns that both virtue ethics and the critical scholarship inspired by Foucault otherwise ignore. I apply virtue ethics to the contexts of refugee arrival, asylum procedure, and immigrant integration in Western Europe; I then (...) see how Foucault’s critical thought provides a counterpoint to virtue ethics; I finally analyze how incorporating that critique allows virtue ethics to make sense of both the context and the stakes involved. (shrink)

Europe has taken on a new, post-Christian, if not a somewhat anti-Christian character. The tension between Western Europe's ever more secular present and its substantial Christian past lies at the heart of Western Europe's current struggle to articulate a coherent cultural and moral identity. The result is that Western European mainline churches are themselves in the midst of an identity crisis, thus compounding Western Europe's identity crisis. Christian bioethics in Europe exists (...) against the backdrop of these profound cultural cross currents that define the European condition, engender conflicts regarding the meaning of being Western European and being Christian, and bring the public significance and role of Western European bioethics, especially Western European Christian bioethics, into question. The dominant culture of the public forum is post-Christian and post-traditional, although traditional Christianity still asserts its voice. Denis Müller in his paper has clarified the choice between a traditional-fundamentalist Christian Bioethics and a revisionist, progressive Christian Bioethics. (shrink)

In spite of extensive research on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its link with economic and social performance, few studies have investigated the institutional determinants of CSR. This article draws upon neo-institutional theory and comparative institutional analysis to compare the influence of different institutional environments on CSR policies of European firms. On the basis of a dataset of European firms, we find that firms from the more liberal market economies of the Anglo-Saxon countries score higher on most dimensions of CSR (...) than firms in the more coordinated market economies (CMEs) in Continental Europe. This result lends support to the view of voluntary CSR practices in liberal economies as being a substitute for institutionalized forms of stakeholder participation. Meanwhile, CSR tends not to mirror more institutionalized forms of stakeholder coordination. Instead, in CMEs, CSR often takes on more implicit forms. Our analysis also shows that national institutional and sectoral-level factors have an asymmetric effect - strongly influencing the likelihood of firms adopting 'minimum standards' of CSR, but having little influence on the adoption of 'best practices'. (shrink)

This volume contains a series of essays which evaluate the impact of humanism on the various countries of Western Europe, including Italy, France, Germany and England. Contributors also examine the relationship between humanism and political thought, magic and science.

The enlargement of the European Union to include eventually Turkey and the former communist countries is a major challenge for our understanding of the meaning of Europe as a geopolitical, social and cultural space. It is also a question of the identity of Europe as one shaped by social or systemic integration. With the diminishing significance of national borders within the EU, the outer territorial frontier is also losing its significance and Europe will become more and more (...) postwestern. It thus appears that the eastern frontier is more flexible than was previously thought. The EU is now at the decisive point of moving beyond postnationality to a transnational encounter with multiple civilizational forms. Enlargement is not just about getting bigger but is crucially a matter of cultural transformation and therefore it differs from all previous dynamics of Europeanization. Rather than tell the story of Europeanization exclusively as one of national histories and of closure, a civilizational analytic offers the possibility of multiple modernities and thus of a more appropriate theorization of the current situation. (shrink)

Non-Western Christian missionaries from a variety of backgrounds represent Europe as being in decline in terms of its religiosity and morals. Such evaluations are set against a backdrop of Christian demographic shift from the global North to the global South and secularization theory. The shift in demographics is, however, unfinished, as is the inversion of relations implied by the vocal, critical presence of Southern Christians in Europe. There is great religious variety within Europe, the West and (...) the global South. Hence scholars are developing fresh theoretical lenses to take better account of contexts and connections in analyses, and further research into the relationship between rhetoric and reality is called for. (shrink)

What is the self? The question has preoccupied people in many times and places, but nowhere more than in the modern West, where it has spawned debates that still resound today. In this 2005 book, Jerrold Seigel provides an original and penetrating narrative of how major Western European thinkers and writers have confronted the self since the time of Descartes, Leibniz, and Locke. From an approach that is at once theoretical and contextual, he examines the way figures in Britain, (...) France, and Germany have understood whether and how far individuals can achieve coherence and consistency in the face of the inner tensions and external pressures that threaten to divide or overwhelm them. He makes clear that recent 'postmodernist' accounts of the self belong firmly to the tradition of Western thinking they have sought to supersede, and provides an open-ended and persuasive alternative to claims that the modern self is typically egocentric or disengaged. (shrink)

This article proposes a neo-Polanyian theoretical framework for understanding the dynamics within contemporary market societies. It uses this framework to analyze the divergence between the United States and other developed societies that has become more pronounced in the first years of the twenty-first century. The argument emphasizes the shifting political alliances of the business community in the United States and suggests that from 1994 onward, business lost power in the right-wing coalition to its religious Right allies. The growing power of (...) a religious-based social movement is a critical ingredient in the unilateralist turn in the Bush Administration’s foreign policy. (shrink)

The article explores the approach to the study of socio-political crises based on the concept of collegially shared power (CSP). The results of the qualitative comparative analysis allow to distinguish five stages in the establishing of a high level of CSP: 1) a transition of power to a coalition government through a revolutionary coup; 2) a common rejection of practices of suppression of opponents due to the absence of a dominant actor; 3) lack of a new head’s of state sufficient (...) resources to become an independent actor; presence of a common geopolitical threat; 5) maintaining a general parity of power. (shrink)

(1989). Three waves of political mobilization in Western Europe and the coming of a fourth. World Futures: Vol. 26, European Perspectives II, pp. 155-191.

Tome I covers the reception of Kierkegaard in Northern and Western Europe. The articles on Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland and Iceland can be said to trace Kierkegaard's influence in its more or less native Nordic Protestant context. Since the authors in these countries were not dependent on translations or other intermediaries, this represents the earliest tradition of Kierkegaard reception. The early German translations of his works opened the door for the next phase of the reception which expanded beyond (...) the borders of the Nordic countries. The articles in the section on Western Europe trace his influence in Great Britain, the Netherlands and Flanders, Germany and Austria, and France. All of these countries and linguistic groups have their own extensive tradition of Kierkegaard reception. (shrink)

v. 1. From the Italian Renaissance to the French Revolution.--v. 2. Since the French Revolution.

This article is concerned with the examination of the attitudes of the in two regions of the globe, both with respect to basic relations between citizen and state and with respect to the extent to which affects these relations. These questions have too long been discussed primarily at the level of elites or on the basis of assumptions or about what the reactions of the people at large may be. By providing at least some evidence pertaining to both these questions, (...) the study thus aims at beginning to fill a gap which has long needed to be filled and at giving the debate on and on some of the empirical basis which it badly needs. (shrink)

ArgumentAt the beginning of the twentieth century, the Russian mathematician Andrey A. Markov extended the laws of the calculus of probability to trials that were dependent on each other, purely theoretically. In two articles from 1913, which are presented here in English translation, he applied his theory for the first time to empirical material, namely text. After a presentation of Markov's methods, results, and possible inspirations, the introduction investigates the dissemination of his ideas to Western Europe and North (...) America in detail. The experimental application of his method to various types of text finally determines its scope. (shrink)

The only time I met Mr. Fogarty was at a Congress in Rome; I was impressed by his linguistic ability and by his first–hand knowledge of the Christian Trade Union movement. These qualities are displayed in this magnificent book, as regards which I am a learner rather than a reviewer. None but he—with his travels, his personal contacts, his encyclopedic knowledge of the literature—could have written this book. He defines Christian Democracy as “the movement of those who, having regard to (...) the Christian revelation, accept the personalist and pluralist principles” which, in the context of the world to–day, involve the acceptance of political democracy, joint responsibility in industry, the Freedom of Church, Family and Trade Unions as against the State. And he rightly includes Protestant as well as Catholic organised efforts against authoritarianism, whether left or right. (shrink)

This article asks how state formation processes informed the normative frameworks of late-Medieval and early-Modern Latin European and Muslim Middle Eastern regimes. The question at hand is not why pre-Modern regimes discriminated against religious minorities (as well as other groups) during the pre-Modern period, but why Western European states consistently engaged in mass expulsions of their non-Christian subjects from the late thirteenth century onward and the neighboring states of the Middle East did not. Rather than addressing these peculiar policies (...) as a function of religion, culture, or law the article adopts a comparative, contextual method. With the aid of Charles Tilly’s theoretical perspectives it isolates critical variables in pre-Modern Middle Eastern state formation. These variables are then used to shed light on the circumstances and relationships that led to Latin Europe’s mass expulsions of Jews and Muslims between 1290 and 1614. (shrink)

Although the abortion debate continues to simmer in many places, the general issue of a woman's right to an abortion, at least in the Western democracies, is largely settled. In its place, the question of late-term abortion begins to assume a prominence only recently attributed to abortion itself. The advent of sophisticated fetal screening techniques makes possible detection of potentially severe fetal anomalies that in many cases are detected only late in the pregnancy, resulting in the need for late-term (...) abortion. (shrink)

Today, Islamic scholars are faced with a very interesting situation: while in traditional Islamic societies, Sufism has lost some of its significance compared to the nineteenth and the first third of the twentieth century. and in republican turkey, we are also witnessing a kind of expansion of the sufism of the pas west, especially to the countries of europe, usa, canada and australia. Interestingly, in European countries, traditionally professed by Islam, Sufi tirades are quite widespread. This applies in particular (...) to Albania as well as to Bosnia and Herzegovina, Macedonia and the like. (shrink)

The urgency of the topic is due to the lack of research on the problem of the school curriculum with regard to the special elective course "Fundamentals of Christian ethics", its curriculum, the professionalism of teachers, the role of students in education, certain religious uniqueness in polyconfessional Ukraine, and comparison with religious studies in public, private or church schools of some Western European countries.