scholarly journals Immigrant Integration Policies in Catalonia (1993-2017)

Author(s):  
Xavier Casademont

This article analyzes the political frames of Catalan integration policies that were developed from 1993 to 2017. It explores the way some of the major political issues and concepts surrounding immigration have been constructed in a minority nation. Based on qualitative analysis of the main political documents approved by the Generalitat de Catalunya, we suggest that Catalonia has developed a coherent and inclusive political discourse, based on the recognition of immigration as a constitutive part of its population. However, we detect a utilitarian view on immigration with some elements of its philosophy of integration being unclear.

2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (1) ◽  
pp. 22-45
Author(s):  
Akihiko Shimizu

This essay explores the discourse of law that constitutes the controversial apprehension of Cicero's issuing of the ultimate decree of the Senate (senatus consultum ultimum) in Catiline. The play juxtaposes the struggle of Cicero, whose moral character and legitimacy are at stake in regards to the extra-legal uses of espionage, with the supposedly mischievous Catilinarians who appear to observe legal procedures more carefully throughout their plot. To mitigate this ambivalence, the play defends Cicero's actions by depicting the way in which Cicero establishes the rhetoric of public counsel to convince the citizens of his legitimacy in his unprecedented dealing with Catiline. To understand the contemporaneousness of Catiline, I will explore the way the play integrates the early modern discourses of counsel and the legal maxim of ‘better to suffer an inconvenience than mischief,’ suggesting Jonson's subtle sensibility towards King James's legal reformation which aimed to establish and deploy monarchical authority in the state of emergency (such as the Gunpowder Plot of 1605). The play's climactic trial scene highlights the display of the collected evidence, such as hand-written letters and the testimonies obtained through Cicero's spies, the Allbroges, as proof of Catiline's mischievous character. I argue that the tactical negotiating skills of the virtuous and vicious characters rely heavily on the effective use of rhetoric exemplified by both the political discourse of classical Rome and the legal discourse of Tudor and Jacobean England.


Author(s):  
Simon J. G. Burton

Samuel Rutherford’s Lex Rex remains a source of perennial fascination for historians of political thought. Written in 1644 in the heat of the Civil Wars it constitutes an intellectual and theological justification of the entire Covenanting movement and a landmark in the development of Protestant political theory. Rutherford’s argument in the Lex Rex was deeply indebted to scholastic and Conciliarist sources, and this chapter examines the way he deployed these, especially the political philosophy of John Mair and Jacques Almain, in order to construct a covenantal model of kingship undergirded by an interwoven framework of individual and communal rights. In doing so it shows the ongoing influence of the Conciliarist tradition on Scottish political discourse and also highlights unexpected connections between Rutherford’s Covenanting and his Augustinian and Scotistic theology of grace and freedom.


Author(s):  
J. Shahin

The European Union (EU) has been one of the leading lights concerning Internet use in dealing with other public administrations and citizens. This article will argue that e-government has meant that the European Commission has been able to promote a virtual arena for pan-European activity, which has promoted action at the national and local levels in the EU. In the first instance, this article will deal with how the European Commission uses the Internet to attempt to improve its own relationship with both national public administrations and citizens in terms of the European policy-making process. Although the Internet is perceived as aiding public administrations in information and service provision, which helps to deliver better governance from an institutional governance perspective, a focus on this would only tell one half of the story. Increasing democratic participation and regaining trust in the political system at large is also an important issue for public bodies such as the European Commission to address, and this is not merely a technical process. These technical (efficiency, etc.) and democratic stages are two key parts in the process of developing an information and communication technology (ICT)-based governance agenda in the EU. In order to outline the process, this article deals with four different aspects of the European Commission’s e-policies. It makes reference to the following: 1. The Commission’s information provision, through the EU’s Europa (II) Web server; 2. The way in which the Commission has tried to interact with citizens, using interactive policy making (IPM); 3. The e Commission initiative; and 4. The way in which the Commission links member-state public administrations together, through the IDA(BC) programme. This article reveals the increasing coherence of the European Commission’s approach to using the Internet in institutional affairs. Although the Commission’s approach to using the Internet for governance was initially unstable and ad hoc, by the turn of the century, all efforts had converged around the political issues of institutional reform and better governance. This has been further enhanced by the application of the open method of coordination as one of the tools of EU governance, which has enabled the Commission to take a more informal role in implementing e-government strategies at the pan-European level. This article does not attempt to define e-government at the European level nor does it go into policy areas concerning e-government (such as research, socioeconomic inclusion, improving competitiveness, or specific e-government policy developed by the European Commission), but will contribute to a greater understanding of how the EU itself has used the Internet to promote an e-government agenda that is affecting all public administrations.


Author(s):  
Ali Anooshahr

It has long been known that the origins of the early modern dynasties of the Ottomans, Safavids, Mughals, Mongols, and Shibanids in the sixteenth century go back to “Turco-Mongol” or “Turcophone” war bands. However, too often has this connection been taken at face value, usually along the lines of ethnolinguistic continuity. The connection between a mythologized “Turkestani” or “Turco-Mongol” origin and these dynasties was not simply and objectively present as fact. Rather, much creative energy was unleashed by courtiers and leaders from Bosnia to Bihar (with Bukhara and Badakhshan along the way) in order to manipulate, invent, and in some cases disavow the ancestry of the founders of these dynasties. Essentially, one can even say that Turco-Mongol progenitors did not beget the Ottoman, Safavid, Mughal, Mongol, and Shibanid states. Quite the contrary, one can say that historians writing in these empires were the ancestors of the “Turco-Mongol” lineage of their founders. Using one or more specimens of Persian historiography, in a series of five case studies, each focusing on one of these nascent polities, the book intends to show how “Turkestan,” “Central Asia,” and “Turco-Mongol” functioned as literary tropes in the political discourse of the time.


1957 ◽  
Vol 77 (2) ◽  
pp. 220-229 ◽  
Author(s):  
A. Diamantopoulos

The humour of the passage in the Frogs (1419 ff.), in which the tragic poets reply with riddles on burning political issues, is explicable: research on the Eumenides shows that in this play Aeschylus projected political notions in much the way that he is presented by Aristophanes speaking in the Frogs: concentrating the attention of the spectator on the past of the Areopagus and on the circumstance of its foundation, he touches directly on the question which arose in 462–1 through the abolition of the political competence of this body, but he replies to it through a parable which is enigmatic for us. It is obviously such an expression as this that Aristophanes had in mind. It rests with philological and historical criticism to show whether in surviving tragedies other than Eumenides themes of an immediate public interest are put forward under the cover of myth, themes which, through ignorance of the date or of the exact conditions of the composition of the plays, have so far not been revealed. This essay examines from this point of view the Danaid tetralogy of Aeschylus.The subject of the Danaid tetralogy is taken from the story of Danaos and his daughters. For this, Aeschylus could draw on both a literary source, the Danais, and probably also on Argive traditions.Very little is known about the Danais. It did, however, include an account of the events which took place in Egypt between the houses of Danaos and Aigyptos, and it is likely, therefore, that it traced the course of this quarrel from the beginning.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
pp. 56-74
Author(s):  
Mihail Martynov ◽  
D. Serdyukov

The article analyzes the concept of «crisis» as an attribute of symbolic politics, which is reflected in the socio-political discourse. The aim was to study the concept of «crisis» as a tool for the struggle of discourses depending on the political interests of actors. The most important source of modern socio-political discourse is the mass media. In this regard, the study of the manifestations of the concept of «crisis» was carried out using the tools of content analysis and qualitative analysis of the text. As a result of the analysis of the content of the Russian federal and regional mass media, the hypothesis that the concept of «crisis» is used in the struggle of discourses, taking semantic meanings determined by the political interests of actors, were confirmed. The predominance of crisis content in the federal press is recorded. It is also noted that the federal and regional media do not so much broadcast a picture of reality, as they take part in the transformation of ideas about this reality. The data and conclusions obtained as a result of the study allow us to further more objectively assess the motivational and substantive aspects of the escalation of crisis situations in the public field.


2015 ◽  
Vol 73 (4) ◽  
Author(s):  
Ruth Wodak

In recent years, we can observe a shift towards the right, in politics and the related political discourse. This paper analyses this development for debates on migration in Austria, while drawing on the concept of "normalisation". The basic assumption is illustrated with an example of Austrian debates following the terrorist attacks in Paris, 7.–9.01.2015. In the quantitative and qualitative analysis of a complete sample of 72 newspaper articles in the period of two weeks in January/February 2015, it becomes obvious that the notion of "unwillingness to integrate" ("Integrationsunwilligkeit"), a completely vague notion (a "floating signifier") which remains undefined and was used only by the right-wing populist party FPÖ in the 1990s, has since moved to the middle of the political spectrum and was suddenly employed by the political mainstream in 2014 and 2015. Moreover, the analysis provides some evidence for the merging of two completely unrelated arguments: an argument about how to deal with non-compliance of adolescent migrant school children with an argument about the prevention of radicalisation in society.


2018 ◽  
Vol 14 (2) ◽  
pp. 45-68
Author(s):  
Birgir Hermannsson

The main purpose of this article is to trace the debate in Iceland about the inclusion of the minister of Iceland in the Danish state council from 1874 to 1915. This debate concerned the interpretation of the Danish Positional Law and whether the Danish Constitution was in some regards also enforceable in Iceland. The state council was included in the Icelandic constitution in 1903 and proposed changes hotly debated until 1915. To understand this debate the political discourse on the state council is analyzed and its role in the wider struggle for independence. The Icelandic opposition to the state council was based on the definition of specific Icelandic issues apart from Danish ones in the Positional law and the proposition that the state council was a Danish institution defined by the Danish constitution. It was therefore against Icelandic self-rule to discuss and decide on specific Icelandic issues in a Danish institution. During the independence struggle Icelanders had to decide whether the state council clause was a matter of principle and should therefore stand in the way of agreement with Denmark or whether a more pragmatic view should be taken. The disagreement was therefore not only between Iceland and Denmark but also a source of conflict and disagreement within Iceland.


2016 ◽  
Vol 1 (3) ◽  
pp. 8-23
Author(s):  
Roberto E. García

Este artículo se enfoca en la figura del emperador mogol Akbar (1542-1605) y en la motivación detrás de sus reformas religiosas. En él se debaten los análisis de algunos historiadores que han interpretado estas reformas como el resultado de un viraje en la identidad religiosa del monarca mogol, pero que no han tomado suficientemente en cuenta la parcialidad que caracteriza a los cronistas de su época, cuyas obras constituyen una de las fuentes principales de la historia de ese periodo. A diferencia de otros trabajos, en este artículo se acentúa el carácter político de estas reformas religiosas que facilitaron al emperador el establecimiento de alianzas estratégicas con líderes políticos no musulmanes, y que al mismo tiempo le permitieron debilitar significativamente la influencia de los líderes religiosos musulmanes en los asuntos del estado. Esta interpretación revela que el emperador mogol, lejos de ser un mero actor político o religioso, fue un estratega inteligente que logró equilibrar los asuntos religiosos y políticos en su forma de administrar el imperio.AbstractThis article focuses on the figure of the Mughal Emperor Akbar (1542-1605) and on the motivation behind his religious reforms. It brings into discussion the analysis of certain historians who have interpreted these reforms as resulting from a shift in the religious identity of the Mughal monarch. However, such analysis have not sufficiently taken into account the bias characterizing the chroniclers of the time, works of which are one of the main sources of the history of that period. Unlike other studies, this article highlights the political nature of these religious reforms that facilitated the establishment of strategic alliances with non-Muslim political leaders and, at the same time, allowed Akbar to significantly weaken the influence of Muslim religious leaders in affairs of state. This interpretation reveals that the Mughal emperor was, far from being a mere political or religious actor, a clever strategist who managed to balance religious and political issues in the way he administered the empire. 


2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. p17
Author(s):  
Yaron Katz

The Arab Spring refers to the protests and revolutions that spread across Middle Eastern and North African Muslim countries in the spring of 2011. It was the first “social media revolution”, which demonstrated the spread of social revolution and the way civil protests and demands for political reforms can swiftly spread globally through social media. Following the social movement in the Arab World, the turmoil in the Middle East continued with the Israeli Social Justice movement of summer 2011, which was also identified as a social media revolution. Same as in the Arab World, in Israel too new media increased the role of the public, who could influence political issues by bypassing the monopoly of the political establishment and traditional media on the political discourse. The research examines the way that the concept of democracy in the region changed in the digital age. The findings show that social media became crucial in shaping the political discourse and determined dramatic changes in the balance of political power in Israel and Arab countries. Through digital technology and online campaigns politics changed as young Arabs and Israeli altered public agenda from the traditional religious and political Arab-Israeli conflict to social and economic issues.


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