bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Conclusion
Authors: Adrych Philippa , Bracey Robert , Dalglish Dominic , Lenk Stefanie , Wood Rachel
Published: May 2017

The Epilogue to this book is an indication of how this project has evolved since the authors began casually discussing appearances of Mithra in their respective fields. At that stage, one could never have imagined that the suggestions put forward in the book might warrant a response from a Mesoamerican art historian, and that this approach might resonate beyond the particular areas of interest of the authors. Claudia Brittenham’s short essay, ‘Quetzalcoatl and Mithra’, is an independent response to this book that reflects on its conclusions in relation to a wholly removed instance of divine representation. This vignette speaks for itself as a fascinating demonstration of the types of comparison that may fruitfully be made, and the example of Quetzalcoatl inspires more reflection on the topics discussed throughout the book.
Epilogue
Authors: Brittenham C.
Published: May 2017

The introduction begins with a discussion of the name, the variety of places in which we find it, and the different forms it takes across our six examples. The comparative nature of the project and its focus on the material culture of religion are discussed in relation to past and present practices of scholarly communities that study Mithra. Both the study of religion and comparative approaches to history lack a full appreciation of the material record, making this fertile pasture for the reappraisal of a figure as intriguing as Mithra. We conclude by raising three questions that run through the book: how might our understanding of objects be furthered by learning about others that share the name? What does the appearance of a name in such varied contexts mean for our understanding of ancient religion? And finally, to what extent can material culture tell us anything about religious practice?
Introduction
Authors: McDougal Topher L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter serves as an accessible introduction to the issue, divided into five subsections. Section 1.1 describes the principal puzzle driving the research: why do some rural-based rebel groups prey on urban areas, while others do not? Section 1.2 summarizes the thesis: namely, that the structure of the transportation network and the social structure of the trade network jointly inform the outcome. Section 1.3 argues for the importance of this study, contending that understanding the rural–urban relationship will bolster our understanding of economic governance more generally—and the nature of disruptions currently upsetting the scalar consolidation of governance institutions in the early twenty-first century. Section 1.4 discusses the gap in scholarly literature this study fills. Section 1.5 describes the structure of the remaining chapters.
Stateless State-Led Industrialization
Authors: McDougal Topher L.
Published: May 2017

What befalls economies that descend into violence? This chapter suggests that the splintered trade networks described in Chapter 2 effectively forced firms in Liberia to localize many of their inputs and to internalize many of the functions that would otherwise be external—imitating the effects of import-substitution and state-led industrialization policies. Specifically, the war economy in Liberia mimicked import tariffs, localized the staffs of many companies, raised local content in products, and even spurred technical learning and knowledge accumulation. In calling attention to ways in which violence localized supply chains, this chapter suggests that the interplay between violent predation is itself a reaction to the structure of global value chains.
Multipolar Trade and Rural–Urban Violence in Maoist India
Authors: McDougal Topher L.
Published: May 2017

Does the shape or strength of the trade networks that link rural and urban areas affect the employment of violence? This chapter attempts to answer this question employing a statistical model based on GIS-derived variables, and using the case of the Maoist insurgency in rural India. It argues that (1) strong rural–urban linkages do in fact lower the intensity of violence employed by the rural Maoist insurgency against civilian people (but not against government targets or property); and (2) highly interconnected areas experience lower levels of violence against people (but not against government targets). The conclusion suggests that network structure affects bargaining power differentials between the Maoists and traders serving the area. Towns redundantly to urban areas simultaneously decrease traders’ monopoly power, while increasing the cost of Maoist capture. These two factors promote a trading relationship between Maoists and redundantly connected towns.
Trade Networks and the Management of the Combat Frontier
Authors: McDougal Topher L.
Published: May 2017

This chapter fleshes out the causal mechanisms motivating the results of Chapter 5 with interviews of traders who cross the Maoist territorial border. It contends the hierarchical form of the caste-based Indian society gives rise to trade networks in which a caste-based division of labor arises: lower-castes engage in local trade, higher-castes in long-distance trade. By enforcing the caste bar on tribal people in long-distance trade, long-distance traders ensure that trade taking place between Maoist-held hinterlands and government-controlled cities remains in the hands of an elite few. Those elite long-distance traders can then strike deals with Maoist cells for trade access, thereby incentivizing Maoists to firmly hold onto their own territory, while discouraging them from taking over such profitable towns. Moreover, this mechanism helps explain why well-connected towns are less violently targeted by rebels: they tend to have more upper-caste traders, limiting their bargaining power vis-à-vis Maoist cell leaders.
Paving the Way to Neoliberalism
Authors: Grinberg Lev
Published: May 2017

The chapter adopts a historical and sociological perspective and institutional political economy to explain the inability of the Zionist labor movement to adapt to democratic conditions following Israeli sovereignty. In the 1970s and early 1980s the Histadrut (peak association of labor) and large private employers formed a distributional coalition against the state which eroded its autonomy and contributed to economic crisis. When the strong and stagnant labor institutions became a political burden on Labor Party leaders, they initiated the dismantling of the Histadrut economy and welfare state, including privatization of enterprises and pension funds, and the nationalization of health services. The chapter highlights the critical role of domestic political processes for explaining neo-liberalization of the economy and the rebuilding of state autonomy in Israel, and explains the irony that politicians on the Left played a more decisive role than those on the Right.
Big Business and the State in the Neoliberal Era
Authors: Maman Daniel
Published: May 2017

The chapter documents patterns of both change and continuity in the structure of big business in Israel in the neoliberal era, and the role of state agencies vis-à-vis big business. Specifically, it discusses how privatization, financial liberalization, and direct and indirect state subsidies have contributed to the dominant position of large enterprises and business groups in the Israeli political economy. While neoliberal policies have served the interests of private capital and business groups, they were actively driven by state agencies seeking to regain autonomy by withdrawing unselective and burdensome state subsidies, and by shrinking and depoliticizing the public sector.
The Reconfigured Institutional Architecture of the State
Authors: Maman Daniel , Rosenhek Zeev
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the institutional dynamics that have marked the reconfiguration of the Israeli state in the course of the transition to a neoliberal regime. In analyzing the transformation of the state and its relationships with the economy, it first assesses changes in the institutional architecture of the state and then discusses the modes of action of pivotal state agencies and the patterns of relationships among them. Specifically, the ascendency of the two most powerful state agencies in charge of macroeconomic management—the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Israel—is examined, as well as the ways in which these actors promoted the adoption of particular reforms as key factors in the institutionalization of the neoliberal regime. The chapter claims that the incremental liberalization of the Israeli political economy was fundamentally molded by actions and interactions among state agencies striving to further their position within the political–economic field.
Institutionalizing the Liberal Creed
Authors: Mandelkern Ronen
Published: May 2017

This chapter analyzes the role Israeli economists have played as purveyors of pro-market economic ideas and political entrepreneurs of economic liberalization in Israel. Israeli economists were strongly committed to economic liberalism already in the 1950s, but they were lacking decisive political influence. Two mechanisms increased their power over policy. First, long-term institutional changes gradually eroded “political” decision-making mechanism and opened the way to greater involvement of professional economists. This long-term trend was joined and reinforced by economists’ institutional entrepreneurship at the height of the 1980s economic crisis, when they initiated changes of macroeconomic governance. These changes enhanced the political power of the Ministry of Finance and the Bank of Israel and supported the institutionalization of neoliberalism in Israel.
Pathways to Neoliberalism
Authors: Koreh Michal
Published: May 2017

Babb and Fourcade used the term “pragmatic” to refer to the adoption of neoliberal policy tools as practical solutions to economic problems. This chapter shows that the pragmatic path to neoliberalism can have a tactical dimension. Neoliberal rhetoric and practices may be applied by specific state agencies as a means to gain institutional power and autonomy over other state agencies. The study is based on detailed process-tracing of a social insurance financing reform initiated by Israel’s Ministry of Finance which virtually eliminated employer contributions to social insurance. This chapter shows how intrastate conflicts of interest were central in motivating a neoliberal reform, as well as in driving changes in the institutional architecture which later played an indispensable role in paving the way to the neoliberal welfare state.
“Wisconsin Works” in Israel? Imported Ideas, Domestic Coalitions, and the Institutional Politics of Recommodification
Authors: Helman Sara
Published: May 2017

The spread of workfare to Israel and elsewhere in the world is typically attributed to the power of a globalized neoliberal orthodoxy. This chapter demonstrates how, on the contrary, the introduction of new employment and social policies in Israel bearing the Wisconsin moniker was an attempt to resolve intra-state conflict regarding the goals and instruments of state intervention in the labor market. These conflicts were resolved through by importing new policy ideas. Via translation, it was possible to assemble a change coalition and advance domestic institutional change. Nevertheless, due to the persistence of intra-state conflicts over the goals and instruments of social and labor policies, workfare was implemented alongside existing institutions to create a new institutional layer. Layering was instrumental in overcoming opposition to the program, but also made it vulnerable to politicization. This politicization brought about the interruption of the program five years after its inception.
Bureaucrats, Politicians, and the Politics of Bureaucratic Autonomy
Authors: Asiskovitch Sharon
Published: May 2017

Bureaucratic actors are located at the center of social policymaking. The chapter illustrates the relevance of conflicts of interests between fiscal bureaucrats and social bureaucrats and politicians, showing that where these conflicts are intense neoliberal reforms may be blocked or muted, at least for a time. The two case studies were selected to illustrate variation in the roles played by state bureaucracies and to cover key domains of social policymaking. The child allowances scheme demonstrates that the level of social policy politicization is influenced by changes in a program’s rules of entitlement, and that in turn the level of politicization determines whether and how bureaucrats are involved in policymaking. The National Health Insurance Law shows how bureaucratic actors may respond to a highly politicized change in the institutional arrangement of a social policy field by shifting the locus of decision-making to the bureaucratic arena, where powerful bureaucracies dominate policymaking.
Building Trust and Democracy
Authors: Horne Cynthia M.
Published: May 2017

Did transitional justice support the processes of political and social trust building and facilitate democratization in the post-communist transitions in Central and Eastern Europe? More specifically, how did the structure and implementation of transitional justice affect outcomes? This book examines the conditions under which lustration and related transitional justice measures affected political and social trust building and democratization across twelve countries in Central and Eastern Europe and parts of the Former Soviet Union between 1989 and 2012. Contrary to blanket claims about the benefits or problems with the use of lustration and public disclosure measures, I argue that these transitional justice measures had a differentiated impact on political and social trust building, supporting some aspects of political trust while undermining other aspects of social trust. Using an original transitional justice typology, this book combines quantitative analyses of twelve post-communist countries and comparative case studies of four transitional justice programs—Hungary’s, Romania’s, Poland’s, and Bulgaria’s—to explicate transitional justice and trust-building dynamics. The book shows that the impact of transitional justice measures was conditional on their structure, scope, timing, and implementation, with particular attention to regime complicity challenges, historical memory issues, and communist legacies. More expansive and compulsory institutional change mechanisms registered the largest effects, with more limited and non-compulsoryemployment change mechanisms having a diminished effect, and more informal and largely symbolic measures having the most attenuated effect. These differentiated and conditional effects were also evident with respect to transition goals like supporting democratic consolidation, improving government effectiveness, and reducing corruption.
Trust and Transitional Justice
Authors: Horne Cynthia M.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 1 provides a literature review upon which to build the theoretical scaffolding of this book and explicates the development of the lustration typology. The chapter reviews the trust literature, highlighting differences in the origins and effects of trust in public institutions, trust in government, interpersonal trust, and trust in social institutions. Chapter 1 also reviews the literature on lustration and transitional justice, highlighting the design and use of measures in the post-communist region. From this literature, Chapter 1 develops a transitional justice typology consisting of four different categories of lustration and public disclosure programs based on the scope and implementation of programs and the degree of bureaucratic and symbolic change characteristic of the different programs. This typology is then used to categorize post-communist countries in Chapter 2.
Classifying Countries within the Transitional Justice Typology
Authors: Horne Cynthia M.
Published: May 2017

Chapter 2 explores each of the country cases in this project, namely the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary, Poland, Romania, Bulgaria, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Ukraine, and Albania. The chapter provides historical details of the transitional justice reforms in all twelve countries from 1989–2013, covering lustration, file access, public disclosures, and truth commissions. This material is then used to place each country case within the typology developed in Chapter 1, according to whether the measures were expansive and included compulsory employment change, limited and included largely voluntary employment change, informal and largely symbolic, or actively rejected. The chapter provides variable conceptualization and operationalization specifics to be used in the subsequent statistical analyses, including three different lustration variables, a truth commission variable, and timing of reform variables. It provides qualitative, comparative historical details to justify the classification of countries according to the primary independent variable, namely lustration and public disclosure programs.
Conclusion: Evaluating Post-Communist Transitional Justice
Authors: Horne Cynthia M.
Published: May 2017

Unlike the blanket criticisms or accolades transitional justice measures receive in the literature, we are confronted with the reality of divergent and contingent relationships between transitional justice measures like lustration, public disclosures, and truth commissions and political and social trust-building goals. These findings force us to reconsider policy recommendations associated with transitional justice programs both because of possibly contrary outcomes, and due to previously unconsidered temporal conditions. With respect to comparative democratization, this study demonstrated a potentially important democracy promotion effect from transitional justice measures meriting continued exploration. This retrospective of nearly twenty-five years of transitional justice in Central and Eastern Europe and parts of the former Soviet Union contributes to the growing body of knowledge on regional regime change, with special attention to how issues of complicity, trust building, and nostalgia constitute unique challenges faced by former communist countries.
Bad Feelings in the Provinces of History
Authors: van der Vlies Andrew
Published: May 2017

Marlene van Niekerk’s novels Triomf (1994) and Agaat (2004) set new standards for Afrikaans fiction. This chapter canvasses the author’s abiding concerns with the forced adoption of the temporality of another—another political order, another cultural identity—that was at the heart of apartheid ideology, and with the multiple disappointments (missed appointments, frustrated desires) that resulted. Focusing on Agaat, it considers the role of the novel (and of the character Agaat within it) as a prosthesis that makes transmission—and critique—of culture possible. Turning to debates about the shape of World Literature, and the place of South African writing within it, the chapter also asks what the translation of Agaat into English suggests about the fates of writing from a specific national and linguistic context when taken up by a discipline that flattens difference.
Temporal Adoption, Novelistic Prosthesis
Authors: van der Vlies Andrew
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that the work of Ivan Vladislavić offers a sophisticated response to the dangers of selective memory—and memorialization—that characterizes some responses to the disappointments of the ‘new’ South Africa. Using Svetlana Boym’s differentiation (in The Future of Nostalgia) between reflective and recuperative forms of nostalgia, the chapter considers the turn to nostalgia in South African letters, and places in that context the negotiation of a ‘critical nostalgia’ in representative work by Vladislavić—including ‘Propaganda by Monuments’, The Restless Supermarket (2001), Portrait with Keys (2006), and Double Negative (2010). It assesses the usefulness of Walter Benjamin’s work (including the ‘Theses’, Arcades Project, and ‘Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction’ essay) for engaging with the affective politics and formal provocativeness of Vladislavić’s work, which balances past and future, disappointment and utopianism, a concern with this place and every place.
Towards a Critical Nostalgia
Authors: van der Vlies Andrew
Published: May 2017

South African-born, Scottish-resident author Zoë Wicomb is a key postapartheid literary figure; her oeuvre complicates assumptions about locatedness, ethnicity, and cosmopolitanism. This chapter reads her novels—David’s Story (2000), Playing in the Light (2006), October (2014)—and select short fiction—in You Can’t Get Lost in Cape Town (1987) and The One That Got Away (2008); ‘In Search of Tommie’ (2010)—to consider how Wicomb stages text itself as a privileged space within which to hold open the promise of the ‘loose end’ (a recurring metaphor), exploring its potential to unravel older formations in the social fabric to suggest new narrative and relational threads. It argues that the prevalence of queer subjects in her fiction mirrors Wicomb’s formally ‘queer’ strategies, including meta- and intertextuality, which offer more than the textual equivalent of characters’ displacements or the author’s own restless transnationalism (here October’s debts to Marilynne Robinson’s novel Home are canvassed).
A Critical Reflection on ICTs and ‘Development’
Authors: Unwin Tim
Published: May 2017

This chapter explores the relationships between ICTs and ‘development’, drawing in particular on the Critical Theory of Jürgen Habermas, and highlighting the relationship between theory and practice, knowledge constitutive interests, and empowerment. It suggests that there are many different definitions of ‘development’, and that the hegemonic focus on ‘economic growth’ has inevitably led to greater inequality. This has been exacerbated by the rapid expansion of ICTs, which have widely been interpreted as being positive for development. There is, though, increasing recognition that whilst ICTs can indeed contribute to economic growth, they have also led to increasing inequality between those who have access to the latest technologies, and those who only have access to older ICTs or none at all. The book argues that there needs to be a refocusing on the interests of the poorest and most marginalized if ICTs are to be seen as contributing to effective development.
Understanding the Technologies
Authors: Unwin Tim
Published: May 2017

In this chapter the author provides an introduction to eight important ongoing technological changes with significant ramifications for ICT4D: an ever more converged and miniaturized digital world; radio spectrum technologies and their management; from fixed-line to wireless communication; from voice to data and the impacts of the digital transition; technological openness and being free; social media and Over The Top services; 5G and the Internet of Things; and incubators, digital hubs, and app development. The chapter concludes by highlighting the importance of a sound technical understanding by all those involved in trying to use ICTs effectively for delivering real development outcomes.
Reflections on the Dark Side of ICT4D
Authors: Unwin Tim
Published: May 2017

Technology is all too often seen as being inherently good, and there are powerful interests limiting the amount of attention paid to the darker side of ICTs and Internet access in particular. However, these darker aspects are crucial to understanding ICT4D, especially since they can more seriously impact the poor, both countries and people, than the rich. The following main challenges are covered in the chapter: privacy and security; the Surface Web and the Dark Web; cyber-security and resilience; negative aspects of the exploitation of Big Data and the abuse of people through social media; and the increasing dehumanization of people through the use of ICTs and the Internet of Things.
Manifesting Time and Space: Background-Free Physical Theories
Authors: Bird Alexander
Published: May 2017

Temporal and spatial relations are often regarded as paradigmatic categorical properties that pro-vide a counterexamples to the claim that all fundamental natural properties powers (potencies)—properties that are dispositional in nature/essence. In this chapter, I consider the consequences for this debate of thinking that a good physical theory should be background-independent. I propose that the conception of time and space not as a background but as an active component of the physical universe help show that temporal and spatial properties and relations need not be considered as necessarily categorical.
Centripetal Democracy
Authors: Lacey Joseph
Published: May 2017

Centripetal democracy is the idea that legitimate democratic institutions set in motion forms of citizen practice and representative behaviour that serve as powerful drivers of political identity formation. Partisan modes of political representation in the context of multifaceted electoral and direct democratic voting opportunities are emphasized on this model. There is, however, a strain of thought predominant in political theory that doubts the democratic capacities of political systems constituted by multiple public spheres. This view is referred to as the lingua franca thesis on sustainable democratic systems (LFT). Inadequate democratic institutions and acute demands to divide the political system (through devolution or secession), are predicted by this thesis. By combining an original normative democratic theory with a comparative analysis of how Belgium and Switzerland have variously managed to sustain themselves as multilingual democracies, this book identifies the main institutional features of a democratically legitimate European Union (EU) and the conditions required to bring it about. Part I presents a novel theory of democratic legitimacy and political identity formation on which subsequent analyses are based. Part II defines the EU as a demoi-cracy and provides a thorough democratic assessment of this political system. Part III explains why Belgium has largely succumbed to the centrifugal logic predicted by the LFT, while Switzerland apparently defies this logic. Part IV presents a model of centripetal democracy for the EU, one that would greatly reduce its democratic deficit and help to ensure that this political system does not succumb to the centrifugal forces expected by the LFT.
Conclusion to Part I
Authors: Lacey Joseph
Published: May 2017

At this point in the book, I have developed the conceptual resources sufficient for providing a normative democratic assessment of modern political systems. Crucially, what must be kept in mind at all times is the extent to which the democratic purpose is satisfied by a) the voting space compound, b) the public sphere, and c) the nature of democratic representation (especially by political parties). These are the three key interrelated democratic features that determine the power relationship between a political community and its regime. I have also articulated an argument that is of central importance to the book, namely that democratic legitimacy is a powerful centripetal force in the process of demos formation, such that a sustained improvement in the former will typically contribute to forging a stronger civic identity. ...
A Democratic Assessment of European Demoi-cracy
Authors: Lacey Joseph
Published: May 2017

On the basis of the account of democracy laid out in Part I, and the understanding of the EU as a demoi-cracy in Chapter 3, an assessment of the EU’s democratic credentials is provided in this chapter. Fundamentally, the question to be answered concerns the extent to which member state citizens have control over EU decision-making through their governments and directly as citizens of the Union. While there are important standards of democratic legitimacy that the EU at least partially meets, the assessment concludes that the EU is a political system with some major shortcomings in this regard. The degree to which citizens can directly control European institutions, or their governments’ behaviour with regard to these institutions, is lacking in crucial respects.
Conclusion to Part II
Authors: Lacey Joseph
Published: May 2017

This part of the project was dedicated to providing a) an account of the European political community and regime and b) an assessment of the quality of the democratic relationship between these two components of the EU political system. It is clear that the EU is a special kind of political system, characterized as a demoi-cracy, which suffers from serious democratic deficiencies. The question now becomes whether or not it is possible to significantly improve upon the EU’s democratic credentials in light of the challenge to democracy posed by the LFT. A great deal hinges on the answer to this question. If the LFT is an insurmountable obstacle to European democracy, so long as there are linguistically divided public spheres, then we must either a) give up on a democratically legitimate EU or b) seek a singular public sphere for Europe by encouraging the development of a lingua franca. While the latter option ...
Modelling Centripetal Democracy for the EU
Authors: Lacey Joseph
Published: May 2017

In this chapter, a model of centripetal democracy is developed to suit the EU’s idiosyncratic political make-up. In principle, it is argued that this model would go a long way towards constituting the EU as a democratically legitimate political system, while creating a strong common political identity among European citizens. This is followed by an assessment of the extent to which the development of centripetal democracy in the EU may be a likely scenario, while it is argued that the centrifugal tendencies associated with the coexistence of distinctive public spheres within the same political system are not yet especially acute in the EU. Finally, alternative proposals to the model presented in this book are discussed and their shortcomings made clear.
Is the Anselmian Being Loving?
Authors: Murphy Mark C.
Published: May 2017

This chapter argues that we have no good reason to believe, and strong reason to doubt, that God, as an Anselmian (that is, absolutely perfect) being, is bound by familiar norms of moral goodness. There is an explanatory gap between ‘x is an aspect of a sentient creature’s well-being’ and ‘x is a reason for an agent to promote it’ that moral philosophers recognize, and it is a central task of ethics to explain how it can be crossed. But the characteristic modes of crossing it (those indebted to Hobbes, Hume, Kant, and Aristotle) appeal to features specific to finite creatures like us. Thus, we should be dubious that an absolutely perfect being is bound by norms of moral goodness.
The Ethics of the Anselmian Being I (Promotion)
Authors: Murphy Mark C.
Published: May 2017

While Chapter 4 gives an account of God’s necessary ethics that is less stringent than what is typically ascribed to God, Chapter 5 offers an account of how God’s ethics may in one way be more stringent. This chapter argues that there is a distinct mode of response to value, respect, which is commonly affirmed by Kantians and various sorts of natural law theorists. It holds that God, as an Anselmian—that is, absolutely perfect—being, has not only requiring reasons, but decisive requiring reasons, to respect the good of creatures by not intending evils to creatures. For when an end is intended, it becomes a success condition for one’s action, and God’s perfection precludes evils’ constituting the success of divine action.
The Argument from Evil and God’s Contingent Ethics
Authors: Murphy Mark C.
Published: May 2017

This Introduction raises the problem of divine ethics and how it bears on the problem of evil (or ‘argument from evil’). It notes the importance of distinguishing among three conceptions of God: God as maximally great being (as ‘an Anselmian being’), God as that being who is supremely worthy of worship, and God as that being who is fully worthy of allegiance. This book treats the first conception to be the most explanatorily basic, and thus it is the sole focus of inquiry for most of the book (Chapters 1 through 6); the second and third conceptions are considered in the second part of the book (Chapters 7 through 9).
Admiration and Awe
Authors: Urquízar-Herrera Antonio
Published: May 2017

This book offers the first systematic analysis of the cultural and religious appropriation of Andalusian architecture by Spanish historians during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Early Modern Spain was left with a significant Islamic heritage: Córdoba Mosque had been turned into a cathedral, in Seville the Aljama Mosque’s minaret was transformed into a Christian bell tower, and Granada Alhambra had become a Renaissance palace. To date this process of Christian appropriation has frequently been discussed as a phenomenon of hybridisation. However, during that period the construction of a Spanish national identity became a key focus of historical discourse. The aforementioned cultural hybridity encountered partial opposition from those seeking to establish cultural and religious homogeneity. The Iberian Peninsula’s Islamic past became a major concern and historical writing served as the site for a complex negotiation of identity. Historians and antiquarians used a range of strategies to re-appropriate the meaning of medieval Islamic heritage as befitted the new identity of Spain as a Catholic monarchy and empire. On one hand, the monuments’ Islamic origin was subjected to historical revisions and re-identified as Roman or Phoenician. On the other hand, religious forgeries were invented that staked claims for buildings and cities having been founded by Christians prior to the arrival of the Muslims in Spain. Islamic stones were used as core evidence in debates shaping the early development of archaeology, and they also became the centre of a historical controversy about the origin of Spain as a nation and its ecclesiastical history.
Islamic Monuments as Christian Trophies
Authors: Urquízar-Herrera Antonio
Published: May 2017

Chapter 3 approaches the notion of trophy through historical accounts of the Christianization of the Córdoba and Seville Islamic temples in the thirteenth-century and the late-fifteenth-century conquest of Granada. The first two examples on Córdoba and Seville are relevant to explore the way in which medieval chronicles (mainly Rodrigo Jiménez de Rada and his entourage) turned the narrative of the Christianization of mosques into one of the central topics of the restoration myth. The sixteenth-century narratives about the taking of the Alhambra in Granada explain the continuity of this triumphal reading within the humanist model of chorography and urban eulogy (Lucius Marineus Siculus, Luis de Mármol Carvajal, and Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza).
The Foundations of an Antiquarian Literature for Islamic Architecture
Authors: Urquízar-Herrera Antonio
Published: May 2017

Chapter 5 explores the codification of antiquarian writing in Spain in its original form as expressed by Ambrosio de Morales in Las Antigüedades de las ciudades de España (1575), and particularly it considers the consequences of the inclusion of Córdoba Mosque and Madinat al-Zahra in this commentary. The terms of the description and Morales’ use of antiquarian tools are analyzed. In addition, the chapter deals with the interesting methodological debate Morales’ writings gave rise (Pedro Díaz de Ribas, Gregorio López Madera, Alonso Morgado, among others) to around the use of antiquarian tools in formal historical research of Islamic monuments: literary sources, epigraphy, and archaeological analyses of the materials and building techniques (stones, bricks, and mortar). Finally, the chapter deals with the conflictive relationship between the narratives on the Islamic antiquities of Spain, the antiquarian vocabulary and the classical canon.
The Religious Use of the Antiquarian Model
Authors: Urquízar-Herrera Antonio
Published: May 2017

Chapter 7 considers the link between archaeological arguments about the medieval Islamic buildings of Spain, the concept of restoration of the Christian nation, and the genealogical proposals of the ancient origin of the temples in the early times of local and national Christianity. The example of the changes of scope among the various Francisco Bermúdez de Pedraza writings on Granada is used to introduce the use of the antiquarian framework for the religious appropriation of Islamic monuments on the basis of archaeological tools and religious forgeries. A new model of local history is subsequently described, one entangled with ecclesiastical history where the antiquarian framework promoted an interpretation of Islamic buildings as ancient evidence of Christianity.
Genealogical Forgery and Continuity of Christian Worship
Authors: Urquízar-Herrera Antonio
Published: May 2017

Chapter 8 provides a general analysis of how mythical foundational links worked in the religious appropriation of Islamic buildings. The chapter opens with the exploration of the stories that related the foundation of the temples to early Christianity in Roman times or to Phoenician and Hebrew antecedents of Christianity (Pablo de Céspedes, Juan de Mora, Jerónimo Román de la Higuera, and Cristóbal Lozano, among others). In addition, the narratives on religious continuity are studied. These narratives connected the interpretation of mosques to Spanish Christianity, at the time of the Muslims’ arrival, through the remembrance of the Goths and the Mozarabs. Toledo is a special case study in this regard. The chapter closes with an exploration of the inventions of pre-Islamic cult images as a narrative resource for the symbolic appropriation of Islamic spaces. Among other examples Our Lady the Ancient from Seville is analyzed.
Charting the Impact of Historiographical Texts?
Authors: Urquízar-Herrera Antonio
Published: May 2017

The concluding chapter deals with an attempt to control the validity of some of the ideas about cultural hybridity and homogenization proposed in previous chapters. In this regard, special attention has been paid to the reception of historiographical narratives on the Spanish Islamic buildings by their early modern contemporaries. This has required a review of several topics: the circumstances surrounding the dissemination of ideas through literature as well as through presence in the public milieu of civil and religious feast days and liturgies; the perpetuation of these lines of thought through intellectual traditions; visual imagery as a selective filtering device for ideas; and the contrast between local ideological agendas and foreign visitors’ perceptions.
Child Poverty during the Recession in Germany
Authors: Bahle Thomas , Krause Peter
Published: May 2017

In Germany child poverty was hardly affected by the crisis, but continues to be a structural problem. The chapter describes the main trends in child poverty before and over the crisis. Furthermore it analyses why the crisis did not have a strong impact and which structural problems in the German welfare system and on the labour market have contributed to the persistence of child poverty. Structural problems are identified in particular in three areas: access to employment, low earnings and low social benefits which are not targeted at low-income families. Single-mother families and parents with low qualifications therefore continue to have a high poverty risk, even when the conditions have improved after the first years of the crisis.
The Material World of a Household and Collection
Authors: Hamilton Tom
Published: May 2017

This chapter demonstrates the significance of the Palais de Justice at the summit of Parisian office-holding society and as a centre of information and communication in the capital. It situates L’Estoile in the social hierarchy of the Palais, analysing his duties in its Chancery and his involvement in the sale of offices, a crucial factor in the complex and developing administration of the early modern French state. Like most office-holders, L’Estoile openly criticized the sale of offices while tacitly practising it. His understanding of his colleagues’ use and abuse of this system reveals how it worked from the inside. From his position in the Chancery, L’Estoile was particularly involved in the licensing of printed books, and his professional expertise gives his diaries unparalleled insight into the public presence of print in Paris and the limits that contemporaries imposed on its sale and circulation.
Drolleries of the League, 1589‒1598
Authors: Hamilton Tom
Published: May 2017

Following the defeat of the League, L’Estoile kept an increasingly detailed record of his collecting activities. This chapter demonstrates how L’Estoile’s responses to the books he collected were characterized by exchanges in the society surrounding the Palais de Justice, made up of its printers, bookbinders, scribes, office-holders, and the erudite humanists whose legal training drew them into its orbit. It sets out how L’Estoile managed his library, how he read books with erudite, Gallican friends, and then how he inherited and passed them on within his family. At the end of the civil wars, L’Estoile was no passive observer of Parisian erudition, but a key figure in its intellectual culture whose collection attracted visits from friends and family, as well as collectors from across Europe.
Dramatis Institutiones
Authors: Henning C. Randall
Published: May 2017

The regime complex for crisis finance in the euro area included the European Council, Council of the European Union, and Eurogroup in addition to the three institutions of the troika. As the member states acted largely, though not exclusively, through the council system, these bodies stood at the center of the institutional mix. This chapter reviews the institutions as a prelude to examining the dilemmas that confronted them over the course of the crises. It presents a brief review of some of the basic facts about their origins, membership, and organization. Each section then delves more deeply into these institutions’ governance and principles to understand their capabilities and strategic challenges. As a consequence of different mandates and design, the European Commission, European Central Bank, and International Monetary Fund diverged with respect to their approach to financing, adjustment, conditionality, and debt sustainability. This divergence set the stage for institutional conflict in the country programs.
Euro Crisis in a Nutshell
Authors: Henning C. Randall
Published: May 2017

This chapter provides an overview of the origins and evolution of the euro crisis as a whole, as the backdrop to examining the country-specific financial rescue programs. It reviews the economics of the crisis and governments’ loss of access to financial markets during the acute phase, 2010–13. The chapter addresses the overall response to the crisis on the part of the European institutions and euro-area member states, best characterized as “muddling through.” The response nonetheless bought time for the introduction of unconventional monetary policy on the part of the European Central Bank and of new financial facilities and steps toward banking union on the part of governments. The chapter then reviews the design of the programs for countries in Central and Eastern Europe, especially for Latvia, over which the European Commission and the International Monetary Fund clashed strongly. The two institutions began to work out their modus vivendi during these early programs, precursors to the euro crisis.
The Troika, Ireland, and Portugal
Authors: Henning C. Randall
Published: May 2017

This chapter examines the organization of the troika as it was constituted for the first Greek program and then renewed for the programs for Ireland in late 2010 and Portugal in spring 2011. It reviews the modalities of the troika’s negotiations with borrowing countries and several, though not all, points of disagreement among the three institutions over program design: financing, fiscal adjustment, banking sector restructuring, and structural reform. The Irish crisis resulted from excessively risky lending through the banking sector, whereas the Portuguese crisis inhered in structural rigidities with consequences for the banking sector and fiscal sustainability. The programs for these countries demonstrate that the European Central Bank played a critical role through decisions on Emergency Liquidity Assistance (ELA) and bail-in of private creditors to banks, while its policies lay outside the programs’ scope. They also demonstrate that creditor governments effectively decided the institutional arrangements for the rescues.
Spain and Italy
Authors: Henning C. Randall
Published: May 2017

Spain and Italy posed threats to the integrity of the monetary union that were a magnitude greater than those posed by the previous crisis countries. Owing in part to actions by the European Central Bank, the program for Spain could be limited nominally to its banking system, while Italy could avoid a program altogether. The Spanish program’s institutional arrangement is best understood as a variation on, rather than a rejection of, the troika. It was linked to Spain’s commitment to fiscal austerity and structural reform, while the International Monetary Fund was involved in program design and monitoring. Political affinity between the governments of Spain and Germany and the economic size of Spain explain the choice of the institutional arrangement. Owing to Spain’s size, the IMF would have required adjustments in euro-area policies to which member states and the ECB were not willing to agree. Key member states were thus pivotal in defining the roles of the institutions.
New Facilities and Institutions
Authors: Henning C. Randall
Published: May 2017

As the crisis evolved, euro-area governments first constructed two transitional financial facilities and then created a permanent fund. This chapter reviews the creation of the financial facilities of the euro area culminating in the establishment of the European Stability Mechanism. The ESM treaty contains a strong presumption, but not a strict legal requirement, that the International Monetary Fund (IMF) will also be involved in assistance to a member state. As a political matter, the Fund’s involvement is strongly favored in creditor countries of the euro area. The emergence of the ESM, a new institutional player in crisis finance, prompted a reconsideration of the institutional arrangements under which crisis programs are designed. The chapter reviews proposals from research institutes and the European Parliament to combine resources of the European Commission and the ESM into a European Monetary Fund.
Varieties of Clean Energy Transitions in Europe
Authors: Ćetković Stefan , Buzogány Aron , Schreurs Miranda
Published: May 2017

The chapter adopts a novel approach for classifying different types of national political economies and studying their impact on renewable energy transitions. It analyses in an historical perspective the development of one mature renewable energy sector (onshore wind) and one infant renewable energy sector (offshore wind) across three major types of European economies. The chapter shows that the presence of strategic state–market coordination and the decentralized pluralist polity constitute key enabling factors that drive the development of new renewable energy technologies. The commonalities and differences in the political economy of the onshore and offshore wind sectors are also discussed.
Integrating Clean Energy Use in National Poverty Reduction Strategies
Authors: Ezeanya Chika , Kennedy Abel
Published: May 2017

The disappearance of Rwanda’s forests and attendant change in climatic conditions prompted the government to explore clean energy alternatives such as biogas. Unlike at any other time in Rwanda’s history, more and more Rwandans in rural areas are becoming owners of cattle because of the Government of Rwanda’s agricultural direct assistance and poverty reduction programme known as Girinka. This chapter focuses on the various strategies employed by the government of Rwanda in achieving increased biogas use among the rural poor Girinka beneficiaries who use cow dung for their domestic biogas plants. Conditions necessary for successful implementation of clean energy pro-poor reforms in rural communities are explored.