Empire and Counter-Empire in the Italian Far Right

2007 ◽  
Vol 24 (5) ◽  
pp. 99-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Damian Spruce
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Lega Nord ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Territorial Integration

What old Fascisms and new nationalisms circulate in the political spaces of Europe? Through an analysis of their split on immigration policy in 2003, this article examines the myths and ideologies of the two major far right parties in Italy, the Lega Nord and the Alleanza Nazionale. It argues that the anti-imperial mythology of the Lega, based on the defence of Lombardy against the Holy Roman Empire, has led it into a modernist politics of territoriality, borders and homogeneity. On the other hand, the Alleanza Nazionale has used its Fascist heritage, and in particular the mythologizing of the Roman empire, to open up a postmodern imperial politics, involving the expansion of borders, and the incorporation of new peoples and territories. Through the use of interviews with militants and deputies, it looks at how the Alleanza has re-articulated imperial Fascist mythologies within a new pro-European Union discourse, while the Lega has maintained its role of protest against deterritorialization despite the seeming inevitability of the territorial integration.

Toward the Golden Bull and against the Pope: The Role of Custom and Honor in King Ludwig IV's Nuremberg and Frankfurt Appellations (1323–24)

2020 ◽  
Vol 51 ◽  
pp. 91-113
Author(s):  
Kevin Lucas Lord
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Canon Law ◽  
Northern Italy ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Customary Law ◽  
Royal Power ◽  
Legal Documents ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
John Xxii

AbstractThis article addresses the onset of a decades-long conflict between the ruler of the Holy Roman Empire King Ludwig IV of Bavaria and the papacy. When Ludwig intervened on behalf of antipapal factions in northern Italy in 1323, Pope John XXII issued an ultimatum demanding that Ludwig immediately cease to exercise the royal power and title on the pretext that he had never received papal approval of his royal election. Failure to comply meant that the king would fall under sentence of excommunication. Ludwig responded with nearly identical appeals issued in Nuremberg and Frankfurt. Against previous arguments that these appeals were either legal documents operating within the confines of Roman Canon law or artifacts of protomodern realpolitik, this article argues that the “Nuremberg” and “Frankfurt Appellations” emerged from the king's preoccupation with his honor. His Appellations utilized the language and form of Roman Canon law to defame his opponent while he sought to ennoble and justify his actions with a rhetoric mirroring that in supposed repositories of imperial customary law such as the Sachsen- and Schwabenspiegel. In arguing that German custom superseded the jurisdiction of papal law in his Appellations, Ludwig elevated a discourse concerning royal elections to the highest levels of imperial politics where it would remain and find inclusion, in intent if not precise formulation, in the famed Golden Bull of 1356.

PRUSSIA'S RELATIONS WITH THE HOLY ROMAN EMPIRE, 1740–1786

2008 ◽  
Vol 51 (2) ◽  
pp. 337-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
PETER H. WILSON
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Formal Institutions ◽  
Old World ◽  
International Recognition ◽  
Imperial Politics ◽  
Military Engagement

ABSTRACTMost writers have taken Frederick II at his word and interpreted his sparse and generally derogatory comments about the Holy Roman Empire as indications of its low priority in Prussian policy after 1740. This article offers a reappraisal, based on a re-examination of his writings and his policy towards the Empire and its principal dynasties. Despite his distaste for the imperial constitution, Frederick swiftly appreciated its significance to his goals of security and international recognition. Certainly, relations with the imperial Estates remained secondary to diplomatic and military engagement with Austria and the other major European powers. Nonetheless, the Empire remained more than an arena in which Austro-Prussian rivalry was played out. The imperial constitution offered a means to neutralize threats to Prussia's more vulnerable provinces and a framework to constrain Habsburg ambitions, while ties to minor German dynasties offered avenues to maintain or improve relations with Europe's leading monarchies that were likewise bound within the elite kinship of the Christian old world. For this to be effective, however, Frederick had to engage in all aspects of imperial politics and not just representation in formal institutions.

Getting Over Athens

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolas Wiater
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
New Model ◽  
Dionysius Of Halicarnassus ◽  
The One

This chapter examines the ambivalent image of Classical Athens in Dionysius of Halicarnassus’ Roman Antiquities. This image reflects a deep-seated ambiguity of Dionysius’ Classicist ideology: on the one hand, there is no question for Dionysius that Athenocentric Hellenicity failed, and that the Roman empire has superseded Athens’ role once and for all as the political and cultural centre of the oikoumene. On the other, Dionysius accepted Rome’s supremacy as legitimate partly because he believed (and wanted his readers to believe) her to be the legitimate heir of Classical Athens and Classical Athenian civic ideology. As a result, Dionysius develops a new model of Hellenicity for Roman Greeks loyal to the new political and cultural centre of Rome. This new model of Greek identity incorporates and builds on Classical Athenian ideals, institutions, and culture, but also supersedes them.

scholarly journals Women in Violent Extremism in Sweden

Proceedings ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 77 (1) ◽  
pp. 15
Author(s):  
Hernan Mondani ◽  
Amir Rostami ◽  
Tina Askanius ◽  
Jerzy Sarnecki ◽  
Christofer Edling
Keyword(s):  
Mental Disorders ◽  
The Other ◽  
Average Score ◽  
Far Right ◽  
Employment Share ◽  
Study Population ◽  
Role Of Women ◽  
Islamic Extremism ◽  
Better Than

This presentation summarizes a register-based study on women who have been identified as belonging to three violent extremist milieus in Sweden: violent Islamic, violent far-right, and violent far-left extremism. We studied the women in these milieus along a number of analytical dimensions, ranging from demographic and educational to criminal background and network relationships, and compared them to three reference groups: (i) non-extremist biological sisters to female extremists in the study population; (ii) men in the respective extremist milieus; and (iii) female members of other antagonistic milieus such as organized crime. Our results showed that there are both similarities and differences between groups. In some cases, like age and region of birth, there are commonalities between violent far-right and violent far-left women. Regarding region of birth and migration background, women affiliated to violent far-right and violent far-left extremism are predominantly born in Sweden. Women affiliated to violent Islamic extremism tend to be born in Sweden to a greater extent than men in the same milieu, but to a much lesser degree than women in the violent far-right and violent far-left. When it comes to education, women in the violent Islamic milieu are closer to women in violent far-right extremism. Women in violent far-left extremism perform best at school, with consistently higher grades. The average score of women in violent far-left extremism is identical to that of their sisters, and women in violent far-left extremism perform on average substantially better than men in the same milieu. Women in violent Islamic extremism, in contrast, perform on average similarly to men in violent far-left extremism, and they perform better than their biological sisters. Regarding labor market attachment, violent Islamic extremists have the weakest attachment and the highest dependency upon financial assistance as well as a low employment share (36 percent in 2016), but also a relatively high share of individuals with a high number of unemployment days, suggesting that women in violent Islamic extremism experience higher social exclusion. We find the highest employment share among women in violent far-left extremism, where 89 percent are gainfully employed in 2016 (80 percent for at least three of the last five years) and about a 20 percent unemployment share. Men in violent far-left extremism have an employment share around 10 percent below that of the women in far-left extremism for 2016. The highest fractions of individuals that have not been in contact with the health system due to mental disorders are among violent Islamic extremism, with the women’s fraction at 84 percent, compared to their non-extremist sisters and men in the same milieu that are just above 79 percent. Women in violent far-left extremism have the highest share of in-patient major mental disorders among the extremist milieus (3 percent), higher than men in the same milieu (less than 1 percent) as well as than women and their sisters in the other categories. During the period 2007–2016, 68 percent of individuals in the extremist milieus are covered by the register of suspected individuals. The coverage is substantially higher for men, 72 percent than for women, 43 percent. Compared to their sisters, women in all three milieus are criminally active to a much higher extent. However, women in all three milieus are less criminally active than women in other antagonistic milieus, among whom 67 percent have been suspected at least once. In all three milieus, the share of men with a criminal record is about twice as large as that of women. As far as the gender aspect is concerned, we know that extremist milieus generally have a conservative view of the role of women in society. In our results, this is reflected in the low rates of crime in women compared to men, and relatively marginal positions in the co-offending networks. The fact that women in violent far-left extremism have stronger positions in their networks than the other women in the study population is expected, given that the ideology of this milieu allows for greater equality. This means that women in violent far-left extremism participate more often than, e.g., women in violent far-right extremism, in political actions where violence is common. This pattern of gender roles and criminal involvement also holds concerning women in violent Islamic extremism. This milieu has a more traditional view of the role of women than views among even violent far-right extremists. Women in violent Islamic extremism are less involved in crime and, in particular, violent crime.

COMMUNICATING EMPIRE: THE HABSBURGS AND THEIR CRITICS, 1700–1919

2009 ◽  
Vol 19 ◽  
pp. 117-138 ◽  
Author(s):  
R. J. W. Evans
Keyword(s):  
Eighteenth Century ◽  
Roman Empire ◽  
Theory And Practice ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Current Debate ◽  
Free Standing ◽  
Power Base ◽  
The One ◽  
At Home

ABSTRACTIn the vibrant current debate about European empires and their ideologies, one basic dichotomy still tends to be overlooked: that between, on the one hand, the plurality of modern empires of colonisation, commerce and settlement; and, on the other, the traditional claim to single and undividedimperiumso long embodied in the Roman Empire and its successor, the Holy Roman Empire, or (First) Reich. This paper examines the tensions between the two, as manifested in the theory and practice of Habsburg imperial rule. The Habsburgs, emperors of the Reich almost continuously through its last centuries, sought to build their own power-base within and beyond it. The first half of the paper examines how by the eighteenth century their ‘Monarchy’, subsisting alongside the Reich, dealt with the associated legacy of empire. After the dissolution of the Holy Roman Empire in 1806 the Habsburgs could pursue a free-standing Austrian ‘imperialism’, but it rested on an uneasy combination of old and new elements and was correspondingly vulnerable to challenge from abroad and censure at home. The second half of the article charts this aspect of Habsburg government through an age of international imperialism and its contribution to the collapse of the Dual Monarchy in 1918.

The Contours of the Non-Lutheran Reformation in Germany, 1522–1546

2021 ◽  
Vol 101 (2-3) ◽  
pp. 167-174
Author(s):  
James M. Stayer
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Roman Catholic ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
The Other ◽  
Alternative View ◽  
Late Middle Ages ◽  
The Common

Abstract Among the common ways of portraying Reformation divides are the following categories: Magisterial vs Radical Reformations; or a “church type” vs a “sect type” of reform. This essay offers an alternative view. It underscores the differences between Lutherans and Anglicans on one side; and the Reformed, Anabaptists, and Schwenckfelders on the other. The Lutherans, like the Anglicans under Henry VIII, worshipped in altar-centered churches which were Roman Catholic in appearance. They presented themselves as reformers of Catholic errors of the late Middle Ages. By contrast, when the Reformed, Anabaptists, and Schwenckfelders met for worship, it was in unadorned Bible-centered meeting houses. The Anabaptists were targeted for martyrdom by the decree of the Holy Roman Empire of 1529 against Wiedertäufer (“rebaptists”). Contrary to the later memory that they practiced a theology of martyrdom, the preference of apprehended Anabaptists was to recant.

Whose knowledge for what politics?

2003 ◽  
Vol 29 (S1) ◽  
pp. 199-221 ◽  
Author(s):  
Karena Shaw
Keyword(s):  
Political Institutions ◽  
The Other ◽  
The Political ◽  
Political Practice ◽  
Research Strategies ◽  
Progressive Politics ◽  
Primary Object ◽  
Contemporary Study ◽  
The One

We find ourselves amidst an explosion of literature about how our worlds are being fundamentally changed (or not) through processes that have come to be clumped under the vague title of ‘globalisation’. As we wander our way through this literature, we might find ourselves – with others – feeling perplexed and anxious about the loss of a clear sense of what politics is, where it happens, what it is about, and what we need to know to understand and engage in it. This in turn leads many of us to contribute to a slightly smaller literature, such as this Special Issue, seeking to theorise how the space and character of politics might be changing, and how we might adapt our research strategies to accommodate these changes and maintain the confidence that we, and the disciplines we contribute to, still have relevant things to say about international politics. While this is not a difficult thing to claim, and it is not difficult to find others to reassure us that it is true, I want to suggest here that it is worth lingering a little longer in our anxiety than might be comfortable. I suggest this because it seems to me that there is, or at least should be, more on the table than we're yet grappling with. In particular, I argue here that any attempt to theorise the political today needs to take into account not only that the character and space of politics are changing, but that the way we study or theorise it – not only the subjects of our study but the very kind of knowledge we produce, and for whom – may need to change as well. As many others have argued, the project of progressive politics these days is not especially clear. It no longer seems safe to assume, for example, that the capture of the state or the establishment of benign forms of global governance should be our primary object. However, just as the project of progressive politics is in question, so is the role of knowledge, and knowledge production, under contemporary circumstances. I think there are possibilities embedded in explicitly engaging these questions together that are far from realisation. There are also serious dangers in trying to separate them, or assume the one while engaging the other, however ‘obvious’ the answers to one or the other may appear to be. Simultaneous with theorising the political ‘out there’ in the international must be an engagement with the politics of theorising ‘in here,’ in academic contexts. My project here is to explore how this challenge might be taken up in the contemporary study of politics, particularly in relation to emerging forms of political practice, such as those developed by activists in a variety of contexts. My argument is for an approach to theorising the political that shifts the disciplinary assumptions about for what purpose and for whom we should we produce knowledge in contemporary times, through an emphasis on the strategic knowledges produced through political practice. Such an approach would potentially provide us with understandings of contemporary political institutions and practices that are both more incisive and more enabling than can be produced through more familiarly disciplined approaches.

Translating Sorrow

2016 ◽  
Vol 33 (2) ◽  
pp. 121-163
Author(s):  
Scott L. Edwards
Keyword(s):  
Roman Empire ◽  
Early Modern ◽  
Holy Roman Empire ◽  
Musical Composition ◽  
Low Countries ◽  
Central European ◽  
Cultural Challenges ◽  
The Social ◽  
Italian Music

In the multilingual environments of Central European cities and courts, Italian musicians found a receptive market for their music. There they confronted a range of linguistic abilities that encouraged innovative approaches to musical composition and publication. Recent rediscovery of the opening sheets of Giovanni Battista Pinello’s 1584 Primo libro dele neapolitane enables us to assess one Genoese composer’s experience of a multi-ethnic, Central European milieu during an unprecedented migrational wave. As chapelmaster at the electoral court in Dresden with ties to aristocratic circles in Prague, Pinello also issued a German version that can be sung, according to the composer, simultaneously with the napolitane. This study examines the Central European market for Italian music, the role of the Holy Roman Empire in facilitating Italian migration, and cultural challenges foreign musicians faced in their new homes. Nineteenth-century myths of nationhood depended on histories of folk-like immobility, but in fact migration was a basic condition of early modern European life. Music historians have long been aware of individual musicians’ travels from the Low Countries in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, along with a new trend, emerging around 1600, toward northward emigration by Italian musicians. Nonetheless, there is much more to say about the social underpinnings of such movements. Pinello’s fusion of languages, poetic forms, and registers invites us to reimagine the multi-ethnic complexion of Central European musical centers in the late sixteenth century.

Exploring the “Liberal Paradox” from the Inside: Evidence from the Swedish Migration Courts

2018 ◽  
Vol 52 (4) ◽  
pp. 1162-1185
Author(s):  
Livia Johannesson
Keyword(s):  
Qualitative Research ◽  
Immigration Policy ◽  
Political Discourse ◽  
The Political ◽  
Immigration Policies ◽  
Political Debate ◽  
Liberal Democracies ◽  
Liberal Paradox ◽  
Do So

Courts are influential actors during the implementation of immigration policies in liberal democracies. The “liberal paradox” thesis stipulates that courts are driven by logics that hamper restrictionist immigration policies. This study contributes to this theory by exploring the norm construction of impartiality among judicial workers in Swedish migration courts when deciding asylum appeals. Its findings contradict the liberal paradox assumption that courts act according to inner logics that benefit immigrants’ rights. At Sweden’s migration courts, judicial workers show impartiality by using a skeptical approach to asylum applicants and do so to distance themselves from the political discourse of generosity that has dominated Swedish political debate for decades. The broader implications of these findings are that immigration policy theories can benefit from qualitative research exploring informal norm constructions in courts, as such work can offer new insights about the role of courts in the implementation of immigration policies.

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