Suchergebnisse

Thesis submitted for assessment with a view to obtaining the degree of Doctor of Political and Social Science of the European University Institute ; This dissertation addresses the problem of the sources of associational life and civic engagement. I develop a new theory of the origins of associational life by a comparative historical study of popular sector/lower class associations of urban and rural populations in a set of Western European countries during the period of the 1870s-1970s. The countries under study are Sweden, Norway, Austria (strong civil society); Germany, Netherlands, Belgium (medium to high associatonal life); Britain (medium associational life); Italy, France, Spain and Portugal (weal to very weak associational life). Three political and institutional factors have shaped civil society: 1) Timing of state building and/or international status in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. The latter the process of state building and/or the lower international status in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, the stronger will be political parties and civil society organizations in the twentieth-century. In states that consolidated fully during the mid and late nineteenth-century and/or had been secondary states in the international system in the eighteenth-century, the pre-modern corporatist structures (e.g. guilds, religious corporate bodies) survived up to the early twentieth-century, because the pressures for resource extraction from state-builders were weaker. This in turn promoted a stronger popular sector organizational life in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries. 2) State-capacity: the stronger state capacity, the stronger will be voluntary associations. States with high capacity are able to implement policies and establish goals autonomously decided by rulers. In the late nineteenthcentury, one of the main functions of the state became the promotion of economic development and nationalist mobilization. For this purpose states have established partnerships with associations. This has empowered associations, through two mechanisms. First, associations have received resources, legitimacy and public status from the State, being thus able to recruit more members through the distribution of selective benefits (welfare, pensions). Second, since high capacity states are m ore able to impose a uniform jurisdiction and control over a territory, this will make easier for associations to expand through the whole national territory, to connect different geographical areas and more easily develop encompassing peak associations. 3) Democratization: the stronger the degree of democratization of the regime between the 1880s and the 1930s, the stronger associational life. Democratization is measured by two dimensions: 3.1) the extension of rights of participation, debate, and assembly; 3.2) the degree of parliamentarization of the regime. This refers to the control by representative bodies of the formation, decisions, personnel and policies of the executive. The stronger the parliament, the more associational leaders will seek to influence and establish links with MPs and political parties and build their own agenda according to parliamentary cycles. Since strong parliaments represent the whole nation, associations will tend to become national in scope, and as such more coordinated through the territory, with associational leaders creating links and alliances that run through several regions of the country. Moreover, in a strongly parliamentarized system parties will be also more interested in creating permanent and not episodic links with associations in order to have a higher reach to the electorate.

Elections in authoritarian regimes are meant not to manage horizontal solidarity but rather to install a group of representatives that will allow the leadership to institutionalize a relative & limited form of pluralism. On the occasion of the 1969 elections in Portugal, the inclusion within the electoral lists of the official single party (Uniao Nacional) of individuals who had previously distinguished themselves by taking critical positions with respect to the regime fit into the plans of the head of government Marcelo Caetano. The goal of the present article is to analyze the politics that surrounded & followed from the appearance of this group, which is still known under the label Ala Liberal & embodied at the time what we might think of as a semi-democratic opposition. The consequences of this process are not apparent at the level of the policies publicly defended by the government or of legislative texts adopted into law. Rather, the effects were indirect & many were unexpected -- in particular the consolidation of a political clan. favorable to democratization, one whose networks reached within the state & its institutions as well as out into civil society. Adapted from the source document.

The liberal wing was a group of deputies constituting a reformist, pro-democracy sector of the internal semi-opposition to the authoritarian New State regime during its final years. I have used a prosopographic study of all the deputies in this legislature in an attempt to draw a sociological
profile of this group of deputies and to formulate some theories as to its historical genesis and recruitment channels.

Résumé Les élections en régime autoritaire ne cherchent pas tant à générer des solidarités horizontales mais plutôt à instaurer un groupement de représentants permettant au pouvoir d'institutionnaliser un pluralisme relatif et limité. Lors des élections législatives de 1969, l'insertion dans les listes du parti unique (União Nacional) de personnalités s'étant distinguées auparavant par leur prise de position critique à l'égard du régime répondait au dessein du chef du gouvernement Marcelo Caetano. Le but du présent article est d'analyser la politique suscitée par l'apparition de ce groupe, resté connu sous la dénomination Ala Liberal et incarnant alors ce que l'on peut qualifier de semi opposition démocratique. Les conséquences de ce processus ne sont pas tant repérables au niveau des politiques définies par le gouvernement ou bien au travers de l'adoption de ses projets de loi. Il y eut surtout des effets indirects et pour beaucoup d'entre eux inattendus, en particulier, la consolidation d'un clan politique favorable à la démocratisation avec des réseaux à l'intérieur même des institutions du régime et de la société civile.