The prospects for the spread of democracy around the world in the 21st century appear to be bright, but there are also important reasons for pessimism. One is that politicians and constitution-writers in the democracies are not aware of, or choose to ignore, compelling social science evidence concerning the superiority of parliamentary systems of government and proportional representation (in contrast to presidential government and majoritarian electoral systems). The older democracies are not in danger of failing, but they are losing much of their democratic vitality, as seen in the decline of people's interest in politics, decreasing voter participation, and the serious weakening of political parties. For these problems, too, parliamentarism and proportional representation are at least partial remedies, but stronger measures (such as compulsory voting) also deserve to be considered seriously

This paper will examine one of the most characteristic syntactic properties of languages, namely the case system for the following three Sinitic languages spoken in Northwestern China: Línxià (or Hézhōu), Tāngwāng, Gāngōu, which have been sometimes viewed as ‘mixed languages’. An answer to the following main questions will be tentatively suggested in the conclusion: do we really have case suffixes in these languages (cases are a morphological notion) or simply thematic roles expressed by postpositions (thematic roles are a semantic notion)? Do we really have a Qinghai-Gansu linguistic area (Sprachbund), as has been suggested? Can these Sinitic languages be characterized as being mixed languages?

This article analyses the recovery of the historical memory of the Spanish Civil War in the last decade, after so many years of silence, forgetfulness and oblivion. Four points are developed: first, how this recovery is achieved by the civil society in general and by the Association for the Recovery of Historical Memory in particular. Secondly, there is a brief allusion to the quarrel between historians and philosophers about the place of memory and remembrance for the construction of the history of Spain. Thirdly, a reference to the recent Historical Memory Law is made, and finally there is a point about the important role played by literature in recovering the memory of many painful facts of the Civil War and Franco’s dictatorship from the point of view of the victims.

This article explores the integration of the European Union (EU) as an institution after the 2015–2016 migrant crisis. Qualitative data from elite interviews in Brussels and policy analysis, in the framework of a bigger project about the impact of the migrant crisis on European integration, highlight EU learning about new integration modes as a key theme following the crisis. The article focuses on this theme and argues that EU integration has been happening through intensive learning after the migrant crisis, whereby the EU has been exploring a combination of certain integration modes: shaping the relationships with candidate countries by restraining from enlargement; shaping the relationships with (prospectively) exiting Member States by considering fuzziness at the borders; and exploring differentiation among the existing Member States, possibly through promoting a two-tier EU, instead of universal deepening. A key contribution lies in applying the notion ‘learning’ to understanding EU integration modes specifically after the migrant crisis.

The whole field of historical writing concerned with imperialism and the expansion of Europe has always been suffused with moral judgement. Many earlier historians of empire extolled European intervention in other societies as a force for moral, political or intellectual improvement. Yet, from the beginning, radicals castigated empires as immoral, bringers of racism, genocide and underdevelopment. Asian and African intellectuals, in turn, constructed historical narratives that made the liberated nation the bearer of moral progress in history. This paper argues that historians cannot, and should not refrain from moral judgement on particular issues, such as the excesses of slave trade or the official neglect that allowed the famine in British Bengal in 1943 to kill three million people. They should, however, avoid creating grand historical narratives that describe long-term changes, such as the growth of European empires, as moral or immoral, as progressive or wholly pernicious. This approach merely reduces complex developments to simple formulae and can sometimes be misused by contemporary politicians and ideologues.

The main resource for a country’s endogenous growth is its human and cultural capital. Universities play a very important, but not the only, role in maintaining and building this resource. Universities are institutions situated amongst strong and changing forces. They are caught between government, market and academia. In many institutions, this has led to a strengthening of the executive leadership at the expense of the influence of collegial bodies, and external (to the institution) members have been introduced into the governing bodies. This development has resulted in diminished state control, and more flexible and autonomous systems, but also to expanded reporting and accounting, which often in reality limit freedom and are perceived as control. Will academic creativity thrive within this reality? How would research universities evolve? This article claims that today’s university development starts out from Wilhelm von Humboldt’s universe but will play out in that of his brother Alexander’s.

The main question this article seeks to answer is: who governs who within the EU? To provide an answer, we will analyse the relationship between national sovereignty and the ability to exercise independent economic policy within the EMU, as well as re-examine the development of this relationship regarding the process of European integration. This research offers a complementary study to understand better the relationship between European integration and national sovereignty.

During the first half of the 20th century, it was quite common among philosophers – ranging from the logical empiricists to existentialists like Sartre and Heidegger – to regard ethics as beyond rational justification. These tendencies are found even today, mostly among scientists who have not followed the developments in philosophy, but also among postmodernists and some other philosophers who seem to be unaware of what is going on in philosophy today. This paper outlines how the picture has changed from the early part of the century to now. Central figures in this development have been Nelson Goodman, Israel Scheffler and John Rawls. However, many of their ideas were interestingly anticipated by earlier philosophers, notably Edmund Husserl. This essay focuses on the issues rather than on the people. Its aim is to give a fairly accurate picture of the present situation with regard to justification in ethics.

Extinction of widespread species is common in evolutionary time (millions of years) but rare in ecological time (hundreds or thousands of years). In the fossil record, there appears to be a smooth continuum between background and mass extinction; and the clustering of extinctions at mass extinctions cannot be explained by the chance coincidence of independent events. Although some extinction is selective, much is apparently random in that survivors have no recognizable superiority over victims. Extinction certainly plays an important role in evolution, but whether it is constructive or destructive has not yet been determined.

In this paper, the role of co-operative agreements in R&D, as a strategic option for firms confronted with the globalization of markets and the multiplication of sources of new technology is examined within the European context. It is argued that a plausible case can be made for co-operative R&D ventures, especially where positive and large technological spillovers exist, when the fixed component of technology-development cost is high and the hedging of risk is an important incentive, and when participating firms produce complementary products. The empirical evidence of a significant multiplication of R&D partnerships in Europe illustrates, from this perspective, the strategic option that firms were confronted with as competition ‘Europeanized’ and ‘globalized’ and technology changed rapidly and unpredictably. Co-operative agreements in R&D also create problems. One such problem is that the agreements could be a vehicle for reducing competition in the downstream product market and for creating barriers to entry. From that point of view, existing EC regulations seems well adapted, but this leaves open the question of conflicts between differing competition policies at the world level. The growing web of international coalitions makes it increasingly difficult, if not impossible, to implement a European technology policy whose results are not accessible to companies and countries competing with Europe.

The Dead Sea area is unique in the sense that it is a natural laboratory in which key topics in several scientific disciplines can be studied in situ. Processes that take place during continental break-up, geochemistry and dynamics of the hypersaline Dead Sea water, paleoclimate and paleoseismic records in sediments and the survival mechanisms of halophilic micro-organisms are among the topics being studied there. Active tectonic processes control all aspects of the Dead Sea and have created an environment that has also influenced the course of human history.

Interdisciplinarity is often quoted as a means to solve the complex social challenges faced by humanity, and the future of research is thus seen as increasingly interdisciplinary. However, there are risks and challenges to embarking on interdisciplinary research, particularly for early-career researchers. Encounters – bringing together early-career researchers to cultivate their interdisciplinary skills or to develop new projects – have been proposed and trialled as a means to boost interdisciplinarity amongst early-career researchers and equip them with the necessary skills for successful project delivery. However, little follow-up evaluation has been undertaken, especially considering career impacts several years after encounter participation. This article focuses on two encounter types and evaluates the level of interdisciplinary interactions obtained and the benefits experienced by participants. In conclusion, encounters are found to be highly successful, resulting in many projects and skills/career development. As such, further funding should be allocated to this type of event.

Numerous cases of thesis plagiarism by senior public officials in many European countries have attracted significant public attention in recent years. Such different cases, however, have had different political and legal consequences. This article elucidates some of the cases through the examples of Slovakia and the Czech Republic. Based on the theory of political accountability, it is clarified that the reactions of politicians to the exposure of their plagiarism cases were fundamentally different. Almost no common pattern of reactions can be found in the two countries. It is explained that the only solution in both countries was to adopt legislation allowing subsequent withdrawal of a university degree once acquired.

The creation of a Scottish parliament in 1999 will crystallize a cultural crisis for Scottish higher education. Scottish universities retained their autonomy after the 18th-century union between Scotland and England because the union was about high politics rather than the affairs of civil society and culture. Unlike in England, the universities developed in close relationship with Scottish agencies of the state during the 19th century, and these agencies also built up a system of non-university higher education colleges. In the 20th century, the universities (and later some of the colleges) sought to detach themselves from Scottish culture and politics, favouring instead a common British academic network. So the new constitutional settlement faces Scottish higher education institutions with an enforced allegiance to the Scottish nation that will sharply disrupt their 80-year interlude as outposts of the British polity.

At the turn of the 20th century, intellectuals and artists in Belgium and the Netherlands were keen to define their respective national identities. One of the most striking ways of doing this was based on a paradox: in both Belgium and the Netherlands the idea came into being that their national distinctiveness actually lay in their being international. What set the Belgians, living in the heart of Europe, apart from the French or the Germans, so the thinking went, was precisely the fact that they were able to understand both the French and the Germans. And what made the Dutch different from the inhabitants of the major powers, it was emphasised, was the fact that they were attentive to the general interest, and not just their own national interest. This article focuses on the history of this remarkable ‘international patriotism’.

Translating party pledges into coalition agreements is a crucial goal of after-election coalition negotiations. Full adoption is the best result for the bargaining party, while limited adoption is a kind of compromise forced by coalition partners, and non-adoption can be seen as a defeat. The question of what undermines the compromise and defeat in coalition agreements is, however, rarely answered. This article formulates hypotheses concerning the effect of consensual pledges among coalition parties, and party and voter-issue salience on parties’ ability to adopt their pledges and adopt them fully or partially. The effect of party level characteristics is considered. The analysis is provided on a new dataset of narrow Czech coalition party pledges in three governments established after elections in 2006, 2010 and 2013. Multinomial logit regression is used for the statistical analysis.

After the collapse of the communist power block in 1989, capital cities such as Budapest, Prague and Warsaw had the best starting positions for the development of their own distinctive post-socialist variant of the international market economy. Since then, however, smaller cities, such as Wrocław – the fourth largest city in Poland in terms of population – have been more creative in devising economic and cultural initiatives and strategies to position the city in both and Eastern and the Western European landscape in a recognizable fashion. One of the themes by means of which Wrocław presents itself is that of a European multicultural border city. The issue concerns the extent to which the myth of a richly stratified multicultural history does justice to the reality of the city's recent turbulent and violent past.

This paper focuses on the linkages between postwar economic and social policy development. Examining the relationship between affluence and levels of welfare over the period as a whole reveals a tendency for social expenditure effort to be higher in moderately affluent then in extremely affluent nations. Turning to the question of how economic growth impacted on welfare expansion in the early postwar decades, the paper argues that growth was a necessary, rather than a sufficient, condition of welfare development. Finally, analysis of the era of welfare containment suggests that domestic economic performance has been the main factor conditioning expenditure change