Engaging in European spatial planning: a central and Eastern European perspective on the territorial cohesion debate

The following paper sets out to determine the differential extent of the engagement of Central and Eastern European (CEE) member states with the European spatial planning (ESP) debate over territorial cohesion. It focuses on the written statements submitted in response to the European Commission “Green Paper on Territorial Cohesion” consultation in 2009. The geographical distribution of the respondents is analysed, before CEE member states’ responses are examined in detail, to explore the diverse interpretations of the concept of “territorial cohesion” among CEE actors. While the data collection for this paper has been restricted empirically to the consultation process, it reflects its findings in consideration of member states’ engagement with the debate as it manifested before and after the Green Paper. The debate over the exact conceptual and operational “framing” of territorial cohesion, launched by the European Commission's Green Paper, constitutes one of the many arenas through which ESP currently evolves, together with the transnational initiatives developed in the framework of the European Territorial Cooperation objective, the European Observation Network for Territorial Development and Cohesion (ESPON) and the process that recently led to the publication of the Territorial Agenda of the European Union 2020. The paper concludes that the overall level of engagement of CEE actors in ESP is proportionally lower in comparison with that of their northwestern European counterparts. The increasing involvement of some CEE member states within the ESPON 2013 Programme, as well as the activities undertaken by the Hungarian and Polish EU Presidencies in 2011, suggests that this level of CEE engagement is growing albeit differentially.

Im Interesse der Macht: Ungarns neues Wahlsystem

Until December 2011, Hungary had the most stable electoral system in Eastern Europe: except for an increase in the electoral threshold in 1994, no significant change had taken place since the transition from communism in 1989. On 23rd December 2011, however, Parliament passed a wholly new electoral law, which will first be used in the elections due in 2014. The purposes of this article are twofold. The first is to outline the change of electoral system that took place. The previous electoral law was, famously, one of the most complex in the world. The new law is somewhat simpler, but nevertheless retains many of the old law’s features. The second purpose is to analyse the origins and implications of the new law. Did it simply reflect the interests of those in power or did it also respond to public concerns? Can it be expected to enhance or detract from the quality of Hungarian democracy?

Theology and politics in Richard Hooker's thought

Although Richard Hooker’s private attitudes were clericalist and authoritarian, his constitutional theory subordinated clergymen to laymen and monarchy to parliamentary statute. This article explains why his political ideas were nonetheless appropriate to his presumed religious purposes. It notes a very intimate connection between his teleological conception of a law and his hostility towards conventional high Calvinist ideas about predestination. The most significant anomaly within his broadly Aristotelian world-view was his belief that politics is nothing but a means to cope with sin. This too can be linked to his religious ends, but it creates an ambiguity that made his doctrines usable by Locke.

Support for the far right in the 2014 European Parliament Elections: a comparative perspective

The May 2014 European Parliament (EP) elections were characterised by the success of far-right Eurosceptic parties, including the French Front National, UKIP, the Danish People’s Party, the Hungarian Jobbik, the Austrian FPÖ, the True Finns and the Greek Golden Dawn. However, a closer look at the results across Europe indicates that the success of far-right parties in the EP elections is neither a linear nor a clear-cut phenomenon: (1) the far right actually declined in many European countries compared to the 2009 results; (2) some of the countries that have experienced the worst of the economic crisis, including Spain, Portugal and Ireland, did not experience a significant rise in far-right party support; and (3) ‘far right’ is too broad an umbrella term, covering parties that are too different from each other to be grouped in one single party family.

The origins of small wars: from special operations to ideological insurgencies

This edited volume explores the origins of the term small wars and traces it to special operations. In the 17th century, such "guerrilla/petite guerre" special operations grew out of training and winter operations of the regular forces as practiced in the 16th century. In the 18th century, they fused with a tradition going back to Antiquity, of employing special ethnic groups (such as the Hungarian Hussars) for special operations. Side by side with these special operations, however, there was the even older genealogy of uprisings and insurgencies, which since the Spanish Guerrilla of 1808-1812 has been associated with this term. All three traditions have influenced each other.

Sparta and the English Republic

In 1659-60, James Harrington and Henry Stubbe, two republican authors, engaged in a bad-tempered pamphlet debate about the constitution of classical Sparta. This took place in the context of political collapse after the fall of the Cromwellian Protectorate, as republicans desperately attempted to devise safeguards which could prevent the return of monarchy. Questions of constitutional form were not always at the forefront of 1650s English republicanism, but Harrington’s ideal constitution of ‘Oceana’ brought these questions to the fore in 1659’s discussions. Sparta formed a key plank of the ‘ancient prudence’ which supported Harrington’s theory, and like Stubbe he drew on Nicolaus Cragius’ De Republica Lacedaemoniorum (1593) for evidence, and was attracted to some of the more apparently ‘aristocratic’ elements of the Spartan constitution. However, classical texts and modern scholarly authority, such as Cragius’, were not the only ingredients in the English version of the ‘classical republican’ tradition; sixteenth- and seventeenth-century political thinkers and current exigencies also shaped Harrington and Stubbe’s arguments. Both Harrington and Stubbe ended up challenging the scholarly and ancient consensus that Sparta was an aristocracy or mixed polity, Harrington reinterpreting it to assimilate it to ‘democracy’, and Stubbe attempting to rehabilitate a model of benign ‘oligarchy’.

Profits, malversations, restitutions. Les bénéfices des financiers durant la guerre de la Ligue d’Augsbourg et la taxe de Chamillart

Profit, embezzlement, restitution. The role of the traitants in the Nine Years War and Chamillart’s tax on financial benefits The aim of this article is to revisit the question of the financiers in Old Regime France. It starts with an analysis of the discourses about the financiers under the Absolute monarchy that underlines the complexity of their relationship with the government and the public. It then reviews the secondary literature and highlights the existence of competing historical interpretations (functional, political, utilitarian), which raise the question of their overall capacity to account for the role and impact of the financiers at different times. On this ground, the article focuses on a specific group of financiers, the so-called traitants d’affaires extraordinaires, during the Nine Years War. Further to a description of the specific role and scope of the activities of the various financiers responsible for helping the monarchy to raise the funds it needed to pay for its peace and wartime expenditure, the article examines the conditions and profits granted by the king in his contracts with the traitants whose services were hired for the purpose of selling royal offices in the public and advancing the revenue to the Treasury. It also explores the contractual arrangements of the companies established by the financiers to manage their operations as well as the rights and the responsibilities of their various stakeholders. These bases being laid, the article relies on the administrative correspondence relating to the traités during the Nine Years War to address a range of issues, in particular the extent to which these contracts, and other control procedures, were robust enough to deter fraud. The accounts of two traitants’ companies offer an opportunity to analyse and compare the structure of their income and expenditure (including the volume and cost of the promissory notes sold in the public to finance their payments to the Treasury), to explore the strategies of the contractors, to calculate their net profits and further discuss the problem of embezzlement. The article ends with the study of the context and debates which led to the introduction by finance minister Michel Chamillart, in 1700, of a shortfall tax on the financial profits of the gens d’affaires or traitants, the method used to determine its rate (50 % of the net benefits), its distribution among the various stakeholders (including the bailleurs de fonds or backers), and the related procedures. In total, the article argues that the relationship between the monarchy, society and the financiers under the Ancien Regime was not static and, therefore, suggests that the broad question of control and fraud must be examined against changing circumstances. With regard specifically to the Nine Years War, the article concludes that within the constraints of the Absolute monarchy, contractors offered valuable services by raising capital for the benefit of a king who ruled over a country which, at the time, was by far the wealthiest in Europe, and where ministers failed to foresee long wars of attrition and whose financial strategy was limited by the very existence of privilege. Overall, the traités were too costly to be a viable system of war financing. In these conditions, the substantial fortunes made by a handful of very successful traitants suffice to explain that the government easily gave in to public criticism against the wealth of the financiers and felt compelled, when peace resumed, to cancel the advantageous conditions offered in the treaties by taxing financial profits.

Los historiadores y los financieros de la Francia del Antiguo Régimen

This article proposes a brief historiographical survey of works on the financiers of Ancien Regime France. It argues that the historians’ main conclusions vary according to the period they study and their main research issue (e.g. the building of the Absolute monarchy, financial crises, economic growth). It suggests that the new consensus about the social origins of the financiers does not fully clarify the question of their perception by the public and their role in the monarchy. It notes that the activities of the financiers were varied and evolved over time, and that the technical aspects of their activities remain poorly known, making it difficult to offer a simple answer to the broad question of their worth and their cost for the monarchy.