Coalition Governance in Western Europe

2021 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Full Life Cycle ◽  
Online Appendix ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Second World

Coalition government is the most frequent form of government in Western Europe, but there is relatively little systematic knowledge about how this form of government has developed in recent decades. This volume analyses governments that have formed in the Western European countries since the Second World War and covers the full life cycle of coalition governments from the formation of party alliances before elections to coalition formation after elections, governing and policy-making when parties work together in office, and the stages that eventually lead to governments terminating. Since the early 1990s, many coalition governments form in a context of increased fragmentation of party systems, increased polarization, and the rise of populist parties. The volume captures these changes and examines their implications for the different stages of the coalition life cycle. A particular emphasis of the volume is on the study of how coalitions govern together even when they have different agendas. Do individual ministers decide, or the prime minister, or are the policy outputs of a government a result of a process of coalition compromise? Focusing on the coalition governance stage, we analyse the variation in the use of various control mechanisms across countries, for example showing that many coalition governments draft extensive contracts to control their partners in cabinet. The volume covers 16 West European countries and introduces the case of Croatia. Systematic cross-national data is available in an online appendix.

Coalition Governance Patterns across Western Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 680-726
Author(s):  
Torbjörn Bergman ◽  
Bäck Hanna ◽  
Hellström Johan
Keyword(s):  
Life Cycle ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Control Mechanisms ◽  
Government Formation ◽  
Clear Trend ◽  
Institutional Rules ◽  
Coalition Governments ◽  
Last Stage ◽  
Governance Models ◽  
Over Time

We here summarize and compare the empirical results found by our country authors, focusing on the coalition life cycle in seventeen countries. The chapter starts with a description of the changes that have occurred during the past decades in the party systems of Western Europe, and some institutional rules surrounding government formation and duration. We then turn to the comparing patterns of government formation across countries, showing that coalitions constitute almost 70 per cent of the cabinets in Western Europe, and that the Scandinavian countries have been dominated by minority cabinets. Focusing on the coalition governance stage, we analyse the variation in the use of different control mechanisms across countries, for example showing that many coalition governments draft extensive contracts to control their partners in cabinet. The comparative data we present also shows that such agreements have become longer over time. Focusing on the last stage of the life cycle, we show that in a majority of countries, it is more common that a cabinet terminates early than serves the full term. There has also been a clear trend towards more government instability, even though the variation in cabinet duration across countries is large. We conclude this chapter by returning to the three coalition governance models described earlier in this volume, classifying the countries as being closer to one of the three models, based on a number of indicators and the information provided by our country experts.

For the Victims of Pseudo-Medical Experiments

1969 ◽  
Vol 9 (104) ◽  
pp. 646-647
Keyword(s):  
International Committee ◽  
Second World War ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Concentration Camps ◽  
Red Cross ◽  
World War ◽  
Central European ◽  
Medical Experiments ◽  
Second World

Twenty-five years after the second World War, the International Committee of the Red Cross is still dealing with claims for compensation from people living in certain Central European countries who were victims of pseudo-medical experiments in German concentration camps.

scholarly journals Creating a communist Yugoslavia in the Second World War

Balcanica ◽  
2017 ◽  
pp. 243-267 ◽  
Author(s):  
Kosta Nikolic ◽  
Ivana Dobrivojevic
Keyword(s):  
Communist Party ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Legal Order ◽  
Great War ◽  
World War ◽  
Historical Legacy ◽  
Form Of Government ◽  
Kingdom Of Yugoslavia ◽  
The Great War ◽  
Second World

The Second World War involved the conflict of three different ideologies - democracy, fascism and communism - an aspect in which it was different from the Great War. This ideological triangle led to various shifts in the positions, views, and alliances of each of the warring parties. Yugoslavia with its historical legacy could not avoid being torn by similar ideological conflicts. During the Second World War a brutal and exceptionally complex war was fought on its soil. The most important question studied in this paper concerns the foremost objective of the Communist Party of Yugoslavia (KPJ) - to carry out a violent change of the legal order and form of government of the pre-war Kingdom of Yugoslavia.

scholarly journals Activity of Albanian emigration in the West towards the issue of Kosovo and Metohija (1945-1969)

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 237-255
Author(s):  
Igor Vukadinović
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
The United States ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Communist Regime ◽  
National Committee ◽  
The West ◽  
Health Institutions ◽  
The 1960S ◽  
Second World

After the Second World War, a large number of members of the fascist regime of the Kingdom of Albania found refuge in Italy, Turkey and the countries of Western Europe, where they continued to politically act. The leading political options in exile - Balli Kombetar, Zogists and pro-Italian National Independent Bloc, decided to cooperate with each other, so they have formed the Albanian National Committee in 1946. The turning point for the Albanian extreme emigration in the West is Operation Valuable, by which the United States and Great Britain sought to overthrow the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania. Although the operation failed, strong ties were forged between US and British intelligence and Albanian nacionalist emigration, which were further intensified in the 1960s. Xhafer Deva, who was dedicated to act on the annexation of Kosovo and Metohija to Albania, immigrated to the United States in 1956 and established cooperation with the CIA. Albanian emigration in the West applied different methods in politics towards Kosovo and Metohija. Some organizations, such as Xhafer Deva's Third Prizren League, have focused on lobbying Western intelligence. The Bali Kombetar Independent, headquatered in Rome, paid particular attention to working with Albanian high school and student youth in Kosovo and Metohija. The Alliance of Kosovo, formed in 1949, was engaged in subtle methods of involving Albanian nationalists in Yugoslav state structures, the League of Communists of Yugoslavia, the Yugoslav People's Army, and educational and health institutions in Kosovo and Metohija. Albanian emigration was also involved in violent demonstrations in Kosovo and Metohija in 1968, and cooperated on this issue with the Communist regime of Enver Hoxha in Albania.

scholarly journals Human development and convergence among the states of former Yugoslavia

2020 ◽  
Vol 70 (3) ◽  
pp. 361-380
Author(s):  
Ivan Vujačić ◽  
Jelica Petrović-Vujačić ◽  
Svetozar Tanasković ◽  
Marko Miljković
Keyword(s):  
Human Development ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Economic Transition ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Former Yugoslavia ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Catching Up ◽  
Independent States ◽  
Eu Policies ◽  
Second World

AbstractAfter the devastation of the Second World War, the federal units of the former Yugoslavia were on their way to catching up with the Western Europe, with different degrees of success. In fact, Yugoslavia was considered a success story among the socialist economies due to its specific self-management system. Nevertheless, among the Federal units that later became independent states, regional differences in development level increased, in spite of the proclaimed policy to narrow them. Enough time has passed since the wars of the breakup and the economic transition to check if this divergence is continuing under a capitalist market system, now that all the countries are on the path to the European Union (EU) accession. The paper tests the convergence hypothesis among the states of the former Yugoslavia in terms of Human Development Index (HDI), as a more complex indicator of country development than GDP per capita. The results of two different approaches to test for the presence of β (beta) and σ (sigma) convergence suggest that the gap between the states of former Yugoslavia is closing, albeit at a slow rate. Given that convergence is slow, the active EU policies aimed at hastening the accession of the currently non-member states of the former Yugoslavia would accelerate the process.

Conclusion

2019 ◽  
pp. 271-284
Author(s):  
Ken Hirschkop
Keyword(s):  
Everyday Life ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Richard Rorty ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Roland Barthes ◽  
World War ◽  
Social Democratic ◽  
Linguistic Turn ◽  
The Social ◽  
Second World

The conclusion examines the situation after the Second World War. It shows how the linguistic turn in analytic philosophy ended and how the social democratic settlement in Western Europe gave birth to the new linguistic turns known as structuralism. The author explores the former by examining the career of Richard Rorty and the latter by looking at how Roland Barthes combines ideas from Saussure with a project for a radical analysis of French everyday life in the Mythologies. The book concludes with a review of how the various linguistic turns overinvested in the idea of language.

Living Democracy

2020 ◽  
pp. 199-254
Author(s):  
Martin Conway
Keyword(s):  
Social Class ◽  
Middle Class ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
Class Society ◽  
Rapid Economic Growth ◽  
Post War ◽  
Class Divisions ◽  
Second World

This chapter focuses on the consumption of democracy. What happened in the roughly twenty-five-year period from the end of the Second World War to the late 1960s is perhaps best regarded as a process of gradual acculturation. At different speeds and by different paths, a large majority of Western Europeans came to feel at home in democracy, and began to practise democracy for themselves. However, the new democracies were more equal in their formal structures than in their social reality. The reassertion of boundaries of race, gender, sexuality, and age, after the more fluid and often chaotic experiences of the war years, was reinforced by the evolving but persistent inequalities of social class. Western Europe emphatically remained a class society after 1945. The rapid economic growth that occurred during the post-war years generated new forms of affluence, but these were distributed in ways that reinforced pre-existing class divisions. In particular, the post-war years witnessed a resurgence in the fortunes of the middle class. Whether assessed in terms of its material prosperity, its influence within and over government, or its wider social and cultural ascendancy, the middle class was the dominant social class of the post-war era.

Europe’s Civil Wars, 1941–1949

2014 ◽  
Author(s):  
Aviel Roshwald
Keyword(s):  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Civil War ◽  
Civil Wars ◽  
Second World War ◽  
European Countries ◽  
Frames Of Reference ◽  
World War ◽  
Complex Interplay ◽  
Second World ◽  
Best Fit

A number of the conflicts that wracked European countries under Axis-power occupation during the Second World War can be understood as civil wars. This analytical prism should be seen as complementing rather than replacing the more conventional pairing of collaboration and resistance. The three European cases from this period that best fit conventional notions of civil war in terms of the intensity and duration of fighting among co-nationals are Greece, Yugoslavia, and Italy. A comparative analysis can yield insights into the complex interplay of historical continuities and ruptures, and of nationalist and internationalist frames of reference, in shaping the agendas and choices of participants in these violent struggles.

From Reconstruction to ‘Leisure Society’: Free Time, Recreational Behaviour and the Discourse on Leisure Time in the West German Recovery Society of the 1950s

1996 ◽  
Vol 5 (2) ◽  
pp. 191-222 ◽  
Author(s):  
Axel Schildt
Keyword(s):  
Western Europe ◽  
German Society ◽  
Second World War ◽  
World War ◽  
The West ◽  
Economic Expert ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
Post War ◽  
Industrial Standards ◽  
Second World

Little more than a decade after having lost the Second World War, the society of the western part of Germany, the Federal Republic, had changed fundamentally in the eye of the observer. The economic expert Henry C. Wallich was not the only one to speak of the ‘German miracle’. Not only had the previously achieved industrial standards long been regained and surpassed, but also a boom had set in – as in all of Western Europe – which came to an end only in the 1970s. Simultaneously, both economy and society had been modernised in the process of reconstruction. The transition to a new stage of modernity, ‘society in affluence’, was discussed animatedly. The emergence of new leisure lifestyles in particular was considered a mark of present times. However, in current reviews it is often forgotten that the West German society of the 1950s was to a far greater extent determined by continuity with the interwar period and by the consequences of the war and post-war years than a first glance at the spectacular novelties suggests.

Paul V. Dutton,Origins of the French Welfare State: The Struggle for Social Reform in France, 1914–1947. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002. xiii + 251 pp. $65.00 cloth; $27.00 paper.

2004 ◽  
Vol 66 ◽  
pp. 194-196 ◽  
Author(s):  
Herrick Chapman
Keyword(s):  
Welfare State ◽  
Social Insurance ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Second World War ◽  
Publicly Funded ◽  
World War ◽  
Cambridge University ◽  
Funded Pensions ◽  
Private Government ◽  
Second World

Comparative studies of social policy usually portray the French welfare state as lagging behind most of its counterparts in Western Europe during the first decades of the twentieth century. The sheer complexity of the French system, moreover, with its baroque mixture of separate private, government and quasi-public funds, made it exceptional as well. Yet tardiness and complexity by no means prevented the French from expanding social insurance at an especially rapid clip in the decades following the Second World War. By 1980 France spent more on social security as a percentage of Gross Domestic Product than any country in Europe except Denmark, Sweden and the Netherlands. Today the French are among Europe's most stalwart defenders of publicly funded pensions and health insurance. Given its unimpressive beginnings, how did the French welfare state become such a heavyweight?

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