Italian Intelligence Studies Literature - Understanding the State of Play - A Comparative Perspective

Author(s):  
Mario Caligiuri ◽  
Giangiuseppe Pili
2015 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 33-48 ◽  
Author(s):  
Mathews Mathew ◽  
Debbie Soon

Debates in Singapore about immigration and naturalisation policy have escalated substantially since 2008 when the government allowed an unprecedentedly large number of immigrants into the country. This essay will discuss immigration and naturalisation policy in Singapore and the tensions that have been evoked, and how these policies are a key tool in regulating the optimal composition and size of the population for the state’s imperatives. It will demonstrate that although the state has, as part of its broader economic and manpower planning policy to import labour for economic objectives, it seeks to retain only skilled labour with an exclusive form of citizenship.  Even as the Singapore state has made its form of citizenship even more exclusive by reducing the benefits that non-citizens receive, its programmes for naturalising those who make the cut to become citizens which include the recently created Singapore Citizenship Journey (SCJ) is by no means burdensome from a comparative perspective. This paper examines policy discourse and the key symbols and narratives provided at naturalisation events and demonstrates how these are used to evoke the sense of the ideal citizen among new Singaporeans. 


1981 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 309-335 ◽  
Author(s):  
Micheline Plasse

This article first presents a brief survey of the role and functions filled by the personal aide (chef de cabinet) of a minister in Quebec. The analysis continues, in a comparative perspective, by tracing a sociological and professional portrait of the Liberal“chefs de cabinet” in April 1976 and their successors in the pequiste government in July 1977.We then test the hypothesis that the cleavage between the government and the dominant economic forces has increased since November 15, 1976 as a result of the ideology articulated by the“chefs de cabinet” regarding the social and economic aims of the state. This hypothesis was confirmed.The hypothesis that the pequiste“chefs de cabinet” exercise a more pronounced influence on the decision-making process is also confirmed. Nevertheless, one cannot argue that the pequiste“chefs de cabinet” usurped the power of the legislators; their influence is more political than technocratic. The growing influence of the pequiste“chefs de cabinet” neverthelsss helps to accentuate the tensions and conflicts between the higher civil service and the ministerial aides.


2011 ◽  
Vol 7 (3) ◽  
pp. 392-423 ◽  
Author(s):  
Federico Fabbrini

Voting rights – Citizens and aliens – European multilevel architecture – US federal system – Comparative methodology – Different regulatory models for non-citizens suffrage at the state level in Europe – Impact of supranational law – Challenges and tensions – Analogous dynamics in the US constitutional experience – Recent European legal and jurisprudential developments in comparative perspective – What future prospects for citizenship and democracy in Europe?


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 589-599 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Davie

This article places the British material on religion and social policy in a comparative perspective. In order to do so, it introduces a recently completed project on welfare and religion in eight European societies, entitled ‘Welfare and Religion in a European Perspective’. Theoretically it draws on the work of two key thinkers: Gøsta Esping-Andersen and David Martin. The third section elaborates the argument: all West European societies are faced with the same dilemmas regarding the provision of welfare and all of them are considering alternatives to the state for the effective delivery of services. These alternatives include the churches.


2004 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 193-210 ◽  
Author(s):  
FRANCISCO E. GONZÁLEZ ◽  
DESMOND KING

In this article we defend the importance of the concept of ‘stateness’ in scholarly understanding of political democratization. We argue that because processes of political democratization in different spatio-temporal settings often share important similarities they are therefore comparable. We investigate this proposition by comparing the process of American political democratization with those of other liberal democracies, old and new. We review extant accounts of the historical process of American democratization – including those addressing American exceptionalism, class structures, multiple traditions, social movements, and international pressures – before presenting an alternative comparative account based on the idea of stateness. Attention to stateness problems defined along legal, bureaucratic and ideological dimensions and derived from both the classic Weberian perspective on the state and the more recent ‘third wave’ of democratization theory help to place the long American experience of democratization in comparative perspective. This finding illuminates some of the common political challenges in the construction of liberal democracies, old and new.


Author(s):  
Helen Thompson

This chapter considers the Thatcher governments’ economic policy in comparative perspective both in relation to their UK predecessors and successors and other large-economy states. It argues that the Thatcher governments presided over significant change to the structure of the UK economy, some of it through deliberate policy intent and some as the unintended consequences of their policy actions. It also shows that, seen as a whole, the Thatcher governments left little legacy at the level of policy framework. They were unable to reduce the fiscal size of the state and New Labour pushed policy in a different direction. On the monetary side, the Thatcher governments grappled with the same problems of inflation and sterling and as policy became ever less coherent, set up the ERM disaster, the response to which by its successors has set the parameters of UK policy since.


2019 ◽  
pp. 217-228
Author(s):  
Richard Togman

Chapter 11 concludes the book and reflects on the lessons that can be learned from a holistic overview of the past three hundred years of governments’ attempts to manipulate the fertility of their populations. Reiterating the fundamentally discursive nature of the meaning of birth, fertility, and population growth to our societies allows for reflective insight into the nature of state attempts to manipulate the decision by millions of individuals about whether to reproduce. The global comparative perspective in both time and space, the identification and typologization of the five main discursive frames, and the rooting of the analysis in the discursive terrain allow the major questions of who, what, when, where, and why regarding government efforts to control the reproductive powers of the population and the creation of a sexual duty to the state to be answered.


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