Dieser Beitrag untersucht die Reaktionen organisierter kollektiver Akteure im öffentlichen Raum im Kontext der 2008 begonnenen Wirtschaftskrise. Er zielt darauf ab, zu zeigen, wie europäische Bürger im öffentlichen Raum, vermittelt durch die Medien, auf die Wirtschaftskrise reagiert haben – oder zumindest, wie sie mit den daraus entstehenden Themen umgegangen sind. Uns interessieren öffentliche Debatten zur großen Rezession, wobei wir eine breite Definition öffentlicher Debatten verwenden, die sowohl eine diskursive Dimension (Sprachakte) als auch eine Verhaltensdimension (kollektive Mobilisierung) abdeckt. Die Untersuchung verwendet einen weiten Blickwinkel, der nicht nur Länder einschließt, die unter der Krise gelitten haben, sondern auch Länder, die zum Teil von ihr verschont geblieben sind. Diese Länder sind Frankreich, Deutschland, Griechenland, Italien, Polen, Spanien, die Schweiz und Großbritannien.
The economic crisis that started in 2008 has negatively affected European nations to different degrees. The sudden rise in demonstrations particularly in those countries most hard hit by the crisis suggests that grievance theories, dismissed in favour of resource-based models since the 1970s, might have a role to play in explaining protest behaviour. While most previous studies have tested these theories at the individual or contextual levels, it is likely that mechanisms at both levels are interrelated. To fill this lacuna, this article examines the ways in which individual-level grievances interact with macro-level factors to impact on protest behaviour. In particular, it examines whether the impact of individual subjective feelings of deprivation is conditional on contextual macroeconomic and policy factors. It is found that while individual-level relative deprivation has a direct effect on the propensity to have protested in the last year, this effect is greater under certain macroeconomic and political conditions. Both significant results for the cross-level interactions are interpreted in terms of their role for opening up political opportunities for protest among those who feel they have been most deprived in the current crisis. These findings suggest that the interaction of the contextual and individual levels should continue to be explored in future studies in order to further clarify the mechanisms underlying protest behaviour.
This book examines patterns of political engagement of long-term unemployed youth. The authors show how unemployment affects the personal, social, and political life of young people. Focusing on the case of Geneva in Switzerland, the study shows the importance of socioeconomic, relational, psychological, and institutional resources for the political engagement of unemployed youth. The book shows specifically how the relationship between unemployment and the political engagement of unemployed youth is mediated by a number of factors: their socioeconomic status and more generally their individual background, their level of deprivation and the associated degree of subjective well-being; the social capital that unemployed youth draw from involvement in voluntary associations and interpersonal networks and relations, and the political learning stemming from interactions with welfare institutions and their perception of such interactions. Students and scholars in areas including Sociology, Political Science, Economics, Youth Studies and Social Policy will find this study of interest.
As their economic clout increases, emerging powers are becoming policy-shapers in their own right. This chapter evaluates the ways in which emerging countries have made use of the flexibilities available under the TRIPS Agreement to espouse their social and economic concerns. We consider one of the most significant and controversial of these flexibilities: compulsory licensing as a tool for providing access to essential medicines. Our analysis focuses on India and Brazil as the two most vocal actors on the international scene opposing strong intellectual property (IP) protection. It compares Brazil and India’s patterns of domestic implementation so as to gain a more granular understanding of the law and practice of compulsory licensing in these countries. A further aim of the chapter is to determine whether coordination, learning or emulation has taken place between these countries. If it has, does it explain the diffusion of compulsory licensing practices and, if not, what has led to the particular implementation design chosen? The results are somewhat puzzling, but all the more interesting as they reveal that India and Brazil, despite their shared IP strategies at the international level, have chosen different TRIPS implementation paths domestically. We find no evidence of coordination but of processes of learning and emulation taking place.
Victime collatérale des conflits armés, source de tensions interétatiques, enjeu de prévention et outil de médiation, l’environnement fait son entrée dans le domaine de la sécurité internationale à la charge de l’ONU. Si les missions originelles en matière de sécurité internationale et son mandat fondamentalement polyvalent, incluant les problématiques environnementales, lui attribuent des fonctions privilégiées au croisement des deux domaines, aucune étude transversale n’analyse de manière approfondie le travail de l’organisation – entendue dans sa variété d’acteurs comprenant principalement les États membres et les fonctionnaires internationaux – en matière de sécurité et d’environnement. Ce chapitre vise à combler ce vide en s’appuyant sur les théories de la sécurisation et l’étude des organisations internationales. Après avoir présenté les travaux sur la sécurisation et leurs limites, en particulier dans leur interprétation des fonctions des organisations internationales (I), nous montrerons, à partir du cas de la rencontre des champs de la sécurité et de l’environnement à l’ONU, que la sécurisation peut s’articuler selon plusieurs modalités différenciées et complémentaires (II).
This paper explores the hypothesis that the electoral participation of Muslims varies according to two main types of opportunities, namely, institutional and discursive opportunities (DOs), characterising their country of residence. More specifically, we assess the impact of institutional opportunities (IOs) in terms of civic and cultural dimensions. We then add up the analysis of DOs in their quality of legitimating public debates over Muslims. We conduct our study by relating survey data to standardised contextual indicators of institutional and DOs in four European countries. The results show that both institutional and DOs have an impact, under control of a number of individual characteristics. However, while the civic and cultural dimensions of IOs have an equally important effect, we find that DOs are less crucial for Muslims’ electoral participation. A number of broader implications of these findings are discussed.
This paper proposes an alternative explanation of Muslims’ endorsement of secular values based on their belonging to religious minorities. We argue that, contrary to what is often asserted in both the academic literature and the public debate, Muslims’ endorsement of secular values is not simply a matter of strong individual religiosity, but may also result from belonging to a religious minority. We suggest that this group-level variable may explain differences in the support for democratic values by Muslims in Europe, in addition to the individual-level variable pertaining to individual religiosity. Our findings show that belonging to a religious minority in the country of origin positively affects the degree of support of secularist values. More generally, they suggest that denominational Muslim identities should be investigated by taking into account the role of belonging to religious minorities. Moreover, the article will show how belonging to a religious minority can moderate the negative effect of religiosity on secular values.
