Dissertations / Theses on the topic 'Europe, Western – Politics and government – 1989'

The dissertation examines the establishment and strengthening of constitutional democracies during democratic consolidation from an institutionalist point of view. Focusing on Hungary and Poland, it examines how the right institutions can advance the creation and strengthening of a constitutional order. Among the institutions special attention is paid to the constitutional courts. The establishment and prominence of constitutional courts in most new democracies in East Central Europe fits into the general trend that was perceivable throughout Western Europe after WWII. The main rationale of these new institutions was to safeguard the democratic order from the return of authoritarianism. The main practical as well as theoretical significance of the introduction of judicial review was that it put an end to the then prevailing primacy of unlimited popular sovereignty and recast the concept of democracy in constitutional, rather than majoritarian terms.
Such an innovation plays an even more significant role in Eastern Europe, where concepts of majoritarian democracy on the one hand, and reliance on a strong leader, especially in times of difficulties on the other, were prominent due to both communist and pre-communist legacies. Furthermore, the often ambiguous constitutional documents produced by the negotiated transitions, as well as the sometimes irreconcilable aspirations of political forces, provided the courts with a prominent role in shaping the new order.
Through the study of two issues, transitional justice and the presidency, the dissertation examines the various functions constitutional courts can play in democratic consolidation in general and in advancing rule of law systems, in resolving constitutional ambiguities and in controlling political actors in particular.
Drawing on the analysis of political events, primary sources, parliamentary minutes, newspaper articles and court decisions, the dissertation concludes that while the courts' record in solving institutional problems cannot be regarded as an unequivocal success, their role in defining fundamental constitutional principles is more praiseworthy. Not only did they manage to settle controversial issues as in the case of transitional justice, they also successfully curbed majoritarian endeavors and steered the new systems towards the acceptance of basic liberal constitutional values.

Defence date: 09 April 2021
Examining Board: Professor Dr. Stefano Bartolini (European University Institute); Professor Dr. Elias Dinas (European University Institute); Professor Dr. Kris Deschouwer (Vrije Universiteit Brussel); Professor Dr. Heike Klüver (Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin)
Over the last seventy years Europe has seen government authority decentralised to subnational bodies, offering up new arenas for political contestation. At the same time, the typical cleavages in society that provided solid bases of support for political parties have crumbled, leaving parties in search of new alliances to obtain governing power. Political parties find themselves caught between the desire to get into office in as many government authorities as possible and the desire to present a coherent brand to the public, as signalled by their coalition partner choices. This research project stands at this tense intersection of interests and provides new clarity to the historical record and some exploratory lines of inquiry into the effects of this dynamic. The existing work on measuring the extent to which regional and national governments mirror each other is investigated and critiqued in order to develop a new operationalisation of coalition congruence that is amenable to large-N research. On the basis of this new measure, the historical record from 1945 to 2015 of coalition congruence in nine Western European countries (Austria, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, and Switzerland) is mapped out in order to identify broad trends running alongside the wider trend of dealignment from party politics. Following this, a number of hypotheses about the institutional determinants of congruence and effects of congruence on party perceptions are explored. The number of regional governments that cut across the government-opposition divide has been on the increase in Europe, especially so in some countries, and these cross-cutting governments appear to play a role in party attachment, but not through the causal mechanism of shifting left-right perceptions of party brands as expected by the literature. This project adds a new operationalisation of a concept, a new empirical dataset, extends the branding model of partisanship to the subnational level, and contributes to moving forward the fourth wave of coalition studies.

Defence date: 21 November 2022
Examining Board: Prof. Ellen Immergut (EUI, Supervisor); Prof. Anton Hemerijck (EUI); Prof. Christoffer Green-Pedersen (Aarhus University); Prof. Evelyne Hübscher (Central European University)
This dissertation investigates how public opinion and government partisanship affect social policy. It brings an innovative perspective that links the idea of democratic representation to debates about the welfare state. The general claim made here is that social policy is a function of public and government preferences. This claim hinges on two critical premises. The first relates to the general mechanisms that underlie government representation. Politicians have electoral incentives to align their actions with what citizens want. They may respond to public opinion indirectly by updating their party agendas, which can serve as the basis for social policy decisions in case they get elected. They may also respond directly by introducing welfare reforms that react to shifts in public opinion during their mandates. The second premise concerns how citizens and politicians structure their preferences over welfare. These preferences fall alongside two dimensions. First, general attitudes about how much should the state intervene in the economy to reduce inequality and promote economic well-being (how much policy). Second, the specific preferences about which social programmes should get better funding (what kind of policy). The empirical analysis is split into three empirical chapters. Each explores different aspects of government representation in Western European welfare states. The first empirical chapter (Chapter 4) asks how governments shape social policy when facing severe pressures to decrease spending. It argues that governments strategically reduce spending on programmes that offer less visible and indirect benefits, as they are less likely to trigger an electoral backlash. The experience of the Great Recession is consistent with this claim. Countries that faced the most challenging financial constraints cut down social investment and services. Except for Greece, they all preserved consumption schemes. The second empirical chapter (Chapter 5) explores how public opinion affects government spending priorities in different welfare programmes. It expects government responsiveness to depend on public mood for more or less government activity and the most salient social issues at the time. Empirical evidence from old-age, healthcare and education issue-policy areas supports these claims. Higher policy mood and issue saliency is positively associated with increasing spending efforts. Public opinion does not appear to affect unemployment policies. vii The third empirical chapter (Chapter 6) examines how party preferences affect spending priorities in unemployment programmes. It claims that preferences on economic intervention in the economy and welfare recalibration affect different components of unemployment policy. Evidence from the past 20 years bodes well with these expectations. The generosity of compensatory schemes depends on economic preferences. The left invests more than the right. The funding of active labour-market policies depends on both preference dimensions. Among conventional parties, their funding follows the same patterns as compensatory schemes. Among recalibration parties, parties across the economic spectrum present comparable spending patterns.

This study determines how economic, political, and socio-demographic factors impact the parliamentary election outcomes in central and eastern European countries in transition period. A one-way fixed-effect method has been applied to analyze two main economic models. The dependent variables are share of the Western-oriented and traditional-oriented parties. Data of sixteen countries have been used in the thesis. According to the results of this study, it is possible to conclude that outcomes of parliamentary elections in central and eastern European countries depended on political and socio-demographic factors from I 990-2001. Factors such as loans, received from the United States, per capita in the pre-election year, as a measure of external pressure, and share of agriculture in GDP, as a measure of country`s level of development, demonstrate consistent significance in both variations of the model.

The purpose of this thesis is to reflect on the importance that deception has had on the efficient functioning of societies and the development of individuals. I attempt to do so by adopting an historical perspective, analysing the development of the notion of lawful deception during the Middle Ages and, mainly, the Early Modern Age through theological and political discourses. The scope of my investigation is pan-European. I examine sources from the major Western territories, but I pay special attention to those produced in the Spanish-Habsburg Empire, which was a major political and cultural entity during this period. My claim is that between the thirteenth and seventeenth centuries, the West witnessed the formation of what I call an "Ethics of Deception:" a trend of thought that, without challenging the Augustinian prohibition of lying, recognised deception as intrinsic to nature and mankind, thereby justifying its use from moral and political perspectives. I explain how this intellectual process was conducted, fostered by new social realities, and helped by the flourishing of casuistry, tacitism and neostoicism. Furthermore, I argue that the acceptance of deception contributed to the creation of a new view of the world, language and human interaction. A view that is in the very basis of some of the most characteristic features of Baroque art and that opened the door to some of the most transcendental cultural changes of the period, such as the creation of politics governed by reason rather than faith, the secularisation of social behaviour, and the emergence of the notions of individualism, privacy and freedom of thought. For these reasons, I claim that deception played an important role in the shaping of Modernity.

This study develops a model explaining support for contemporary extreme-right parties. The history and political setting of relevant countries are examined. The research explores necessary state-level conditions, which are postindustrialism, convergence to the center by major parties, and proportional representation. Individual support is probed using survey data with bivariate and probit analyses. Being male and younger proved to be significant variables, while socio-economic status did not. Concerning issues, personal disaffection for immigrants, favoring nationalistic hiring practices, and free-market tendencies were significant variables. Opposition to feminism and pride to be from one's nation were insignificant explanations for extreme-right support. Implications of the analysis are discussed as are issues concerning future research.

The dissertation deals with the conflict over the EU Services Directive which is also known as the Bolkestein Directive. The general liberalisation and deregulation of the services markets in the EU has known the greatest politicisation of an EU issue ever seen in the history of European politics. It mobilised a wide range of political actors, including unions, diverse associations and citizen groups in several member states of the EU as well as in Brussels. The Commissioner for the internal market Frits Bolkestein and the directive proposal adopted in January 2004 have come to epitomize the neoliberal face of European integration. Due to its connection with the Eastern enlargement in May 2004 and with the ratification of the European constitutional treaty in France and The Netherlands in 2005, the directive proposal on services liberalization triggered a general debate over the economic and social nature of the EU polity far beyond a mere matter of public policy. After three years of debate and mobilization, the directive proposal was substantially amended in the European Parliament and clear limitations were put to liberalization of the services of general interest and to market deregulation.

\
Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In the 90´s, Europe used to be depicted as the most privileged political arena for regional nationalist political parties to access for “more” political power. In that sense, whereas formal channels of regional interest representation were taken for granted by those standing within federal political systems; informal channels of regional interest representation were highly valued by regional nationalists standing in decentralized or devolutionary constitutional settlements. In spite of nuanced institutional preferences, Europe was rationally inspired (Ostrom 2005) as it used to be perceived as an aggregation of formal-legal structures that could be used as a means to prescribe, proscribe and permit a certain behavior in exchange of a personal utility. Moreover, regional nationalists were policy “maximizers” who acted in isolation, away from the center, using their own limited political resources to maximize their policy gains by pursuing distinctive forms of political autonomy. However, by the end of the 90’s, both categories of regional nationalists plunged into European disillusion due to the limits of a sovereign logic prevailing in Europe.

However, in the 21st century, as soon as a new European policy cycle started to emerge and the economic crisis started to cripple, experienced regional nationalists realized that they could use the benefits of regional economic resources in face of the European Economic strategy to justify further concessions of policy competences that are still shared, either in theory or in practice, as well as to argue for new ones. The political plan would consist of using the reference of the European Economic targets to deliver policies, which would allow them to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, in both layers of governance, as well as to induce regional citizens into their political plan so they can finally reach the legal threshold to endorse a new state reform. Moreover, since they were rationally bounded, in the sense that they were lacking the policy expertise to perform these goals, they have learned to rely on a policy narrative (Shabahan et al 2011; Jones and Beth 2010; Radaelli 2010) embedded in a territorial economic argument to make sense of an advocacy coalition framework (Sabatier and Jenkins-Smith 1993), using informal channels of regional interest intermediation as “cognitive” structures (Scot 1995a) to articulate a policy strategy to be implemented in Europe and at the regional level of governance.

Therefore, and irrespectively of nuanced constitutional settlements, all experienced regional nationalists have returned to the center, using informal channels as an instrument of governance (Salamon 2002) to clarify the best policy options to be implemented in both layers of governance. In other words, regional nationalists have become “policy satisficers” (Simon 1954) who have learned to forgo immediate satisfaction in Europe to collect major gains of political power across multiple layers of governance. If the term “usage” can be defined as the act of using something to achieve certain political goals (Jacquot and Wolf 2003), in this research, we will apply the concept of “usage” to demonstrate that experienced regional nationalists in government have moved from a rational to a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to perform renewed political preferences across multiple layers of governance.

Departing from an actor centered institutionalist approach (Mayntz and Sharp 1997), we will demonstrate that the N-VA in Flanders, since 2004, and the SNP in Scotland, since 2007, have become new pragmatic nationalists. In that sense, we will argue that, in a clear contrast with pragmatic nationalists of the 90’s who expected to legitimize their nationalist aspirations in Europe by the means of a rational “usage” of the European institutions; experienced regional nationalists have become new pragmatic nationalists as they have learned to rely on a cognitive “usage” of the European institutions to legitimize their nationalist aspirations, no longer in Europe, but through Europe.

We will then conclude that in the 21st century, and against traditional dogmas of the 90’s, the “usage” of Europe by regional nationalists is cognitively twisted, economically driven and collectively performed. It embraces all experienced regional nationalist political parties in government, irrespectively of their constitutional settlement or nationalist credo, as long as they possess the ability to anchor a political strategy embedded in “identity” without sticking to strict politics of nationalism.

Doctorat en Sciences politiques et sociales
info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

Defence date: 29 April 2014
Examining Board: Professor Sven Steinmo, European University Institute (Supervisor), for Professor Peter Mair (†), EUI Professor Nicolas Sauger, Sciences Po Paris (External Co-supervisor) Professor Stefano Bartolini, European University Institute Professor Jean-Benoit Pilet, Université Libre de Bruxelles.
First made available online 27 May 2019
The modification of the formal rules regulating the functioning of democracy has become an increasingly important field of research in political science, all the more so in a context of decline of political support in consolidated democracies. This thesis focuses on reforms of the core democratic rules in Western European democracies during the two last decades, adopting an expansive focus in order to adopt a multidimensional and longitudinal approach to institutional engineering. It investigates the occurrence of reform, successively examining the description and the characterisation of reforms, their contextual determinants and the mechanisms of change, articulating mixed-methods including large-N statistical analyses and case studies. The main theoretical innovation of the thesis is the concept of bundle of reform, defined as institutional reforms linked to each other and relating to several dimensions of the institutional architecture. In the first part of the thesis, thanks to an original database including 6 categories of reform, it is demonstrated that institutional reforms in the last few decades have been frequent, have happened in bundles, and have been moving towards more inclusive institutions. When studying the long- and short-term determinants of the number of reforms, certain long-term factors foster a favourable structural environment for the occurrence of institutional reforms, in particular a lack of political support from citizens for their institutions, but also the disproportional electoral systems in majoritarian democracies. In the short-term, institutional reforms in a given legislature tend to be more numerous after political alternation, and in contexts of rising electoral uncertainty. The thesis also evidences the fact that neither constitutional rigidity nor the number of partisan veto players can be considered to be the main explanation, or even relevant at all in some cases. The second part of the thesis focuses on understanding why, in favourable contexts, some reforms succeed and others fail, investigating case studies of three bundles of reforms in France, Ireland and Italy. The main finding evidences that the final outcomes of reforms are dependent on the combination of the nature of the reforms at stake (divisive or consensual) and the process used to adopt them (majoritarian, supermajoritarian or externalised). Divisive reforms tend to obey a self-interested logic, and their success depends on the ability to build an agreement in relation to a package deal of reforms. During the processes of consensual reform, credit-claiming logics prevail. When the majority chooses to exclude opposition parties and interest groups from the elaboration of reforms in order to claim sole credit, the fate of such reforms depends on the attitude of the opposition, who may choose to oppose the reform in order to symbolically defeat the government.

Defence date: 30 November 2009
Examining Board: Attila Agh (Corvinus University, Budapest); Michael Keating (EUI) (Supervisor); Paul G. Lweis (Open University, Milton Keynes); Peter Mair (EUI)
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
This thesis examines the impact of the changing dynamics of the international cooperation among communist (or post-communist) parties and Western social democratic parties on democratic transitions and on party change. This is done through an in-depth comparative study of the inter-party contacts between the communist and later post-communist parties of Poland and Hungary, on one hand, and the German SPD and the British Labour Party on the other. The thesis analyzes the scope of these contacts, the activity of bilateral groups, and the support offered to the Polish and Hungarian post-communist parties before and after 1989. The literature on democratization in post-communist Europe and that on post-communist parties in particular has neglected this issue, and the importance of inter-party contacts therefore tends to be overlooked. This study shows that the period prior to the system collapse in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) was not a tabula rasa in terms of contacts between the parties from East and West. Relying on extensive interviews and unprecedented primary research in archival documents, it broadens the discussion, unearthing new material concerning the pre-1989 inter-party contacts and the reasons behind these contacts, as well as offering an original analysis of party goals and strategies of cooperation in the Cold War environment. It brings in international factors to offer a fuller explanation of the post-communist parties’ successful accommodation to the new reality, emphasising the importance of their antecedent socialization in the social democratic environment long before the collapse of the communist system. It points to the different trajectories of inter-party cooperation and the diverse policies pursued by parties in CEE and in Western Europe and explains these in terms of geographic proximity and their respective foreign and domestic policies. It further traces how personal links between individuals were maintained despite the communist regime collapse and party competition in post-1989 Hungary and Poland. More generally, this thesis emphasises the importance of taking these particular aspects of party activity and development into account within the context of the democratization research.

Defence date: 12 December 1997
Examining board: Stefano Bartolini (EUI, Supervisor) ; Prof. Cees van der EIjk (University of Amsterdam) ; Prof. José Ramón Montero (Juan March Institute) ; Prof. Yossi Shavit (University of Tel Aviv, Co-supervisor)
First made available online 12 October 2016
Este libro analiza las causas de la abstención electoral en el marco de las elecciones parlamentarias considerando simultáneamente las variables individuales y las características del sistema político y de la elección como factores explicativos. En primer lugar se explora la relación de los recursos socioeconómicos, la integración social y el compromiso político sobre la abstención. Para ello se analizan datos de sondeos post-electorales y Eurobarómetros procedentes de quince países de Europa occidental. En segundo lugar el análisis sistémico centra la atención en el efecto que los incentivos institucionales, los anclajes de los partidos políticos en la sociedad y las características de cada convocatoria electoral pueden tener sobre la variación de la tasa de abstención de estos países. Finalmente se analizan las posibles interacciones entre variables procedentes de los distintos niveles de observación, el individual y el sistémico. Según este tercer tipo de análisis no todos los electores tienen por qué ser igualmente sensibles al contexto político y electoral en el que viven. Mientras que para algunos las características del entorno son importantes a la hora de decidir entre votar o abstenerse, para otros estos elementos ejercen un impacto menor o incluso en un sentido diferente.

Defence date: 14 July 2017
Examining Board: Prof Federico Romero, European University Institute (Supervisor); Prof Pavel Kolář, European University Institute; Prof Josip Glaurdić, University of Luxembourg; Prof Tvrtko Jakovina, University of Zagreb
This thesis examines the origins and evolution of Yugoslav policy towards Western European integration from the early 1950s until the signing of the first Yugoslav–EEC Trade Agreement in 1970. It examines the emerging role of Western Europe in the Yugoslav foreign and internal politics within the larger context of the Cold War and development of European integration. Increased trade relations with the EEC and the domestic introduction of the 1965 Economic Reform proved vital in persuading Belgrade to become the first socialist country to establish diplomatic and trade relations with the Community in 1968. The thesis argues that these relations became of increasing relevance to the economic and, ultimately, political stability of Yugoslavia. Besides the basic foreign (trade) policy concepts towards the EEC, this study focuses on the perceptions of the Western European integration process among the political elite by addressing the following research questions: How did Yugoslav policymakers react to the Western European integration process? What impact did the success of the EEC have on Yugoslav foreign policy and internal differences among the political elite? In what way did the League of Communists of Yugoslavia rationalize their cooperation with the EEC? What did it mean for the internal coherence of the LCY and for Yugoslavia’s pronounced cooperation with the developing countries? The overarching question is how and why already in the 1960s the EEC became such an important external factor, crucial for the economic development and stability of Yugoslavia. By analysing the complex interaction between the external factors and internal dynamics of Yugoslavia and their impact on Belgrade´s policy towards the EEC, this study provides an explanation of the underlying long-term structural problems of the economy that determined the Yugoslav diplomatic and economic responses to the creation and evolution of the EEC until the breakup of the country.
Chapter ‘Conclusion' of the PhD thesis draws upon an earlier version published as an article 'A troubled relationship : Yugoslavia and the European economic community in détente' (2014) in the journal ‘European review of history’

Defence date: 19 March 2004
Examining board: Prof. Alan Milward, IUE (supervisor) ; Prof. Marc Lazar, Inst. d'Etudes Politiques, Paris ; Prof. Silvio Pons, Università Tor Vergata ; Prof. Arfon Rees, IUE
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digitised archive of EUI PhD theses completed between 2013 and 2017

Defence date: 29 November 2007
Examining Board: Prof. Peter Wagner, Supervisor, University of Trento and formerly EUI ; Prof. Michèle Lamont, External Co-Supervisor, Harvard University ; Prof. Richard Bellamy, University College London ; Prof. Neil Walker, EUI
First made available online on 5 July 2018
This thesis explores a new way to conceptualise political community in the contemporary European context. Its point of departure is the normative debate concerning the type of collective bond feasible and desirable as an underpinning for the European Union, a debate centred on the older political-philosophical question of what must be common to a set of people such that they may be ruled through the same institutions. The thesis argues that many of the existing approaches, which conceive a bond in terms of shared interests, cultural attributes, values, or practices of trust and solidarity, are liable either to underplay or to overplay how much the citizens of a polity must have in common, tending either to empty public life of the pursuit of shared ends or conversely to downgrade the importance of adversarialism. Both may be seen as depoliticising moves. Instead, drawing on agonistic theories of democracy and certain strands of political sociology, a more explicitly political conception of the collective bond is explored, based on the appraisal of substantive problems. Political community, it is suggested, should be sought in the common-sense assumptions and taken-for-granted reference-points people invoke when discussing matters of political relevance. The concept of a ‘political bond’, whereby members of the collective are tied by a sense of shared predicament before common problems, is proposed as a normative ideal. This raises questions for empirical study to do with what problems people hold to exist, whom these are assumed to affect, and what possibilities of collective action are recognised for their address. These issues are explored in depth using group discussions with taxidrivers in Britain, Germany and the Czech Republic. Under scrutiny is the extent to which commonplace ways of speaking about the political serve to strengthen a European political bond, and in what respects they run counter to it and would need challenging if a European polity were to have everyday resonance. The analysis indicates that while substantive problems of common concern are readily and richly articulated, and many of them placed in a transnational context, there is notable scepticism about the possibility of their remedy, and unevenness in the degree to which opponents are positioned as legitimate. The thesis argues that only by tackling these wider patterns, which link to the health of contemporary democracy more generally, is it likely to prove possible to build a desirable political community at the European level.

Defence date: 21 July 2009
Examining Board: Donatella Della Porta (EUI) (Co-Supervisor); Philippe C. Schmitter (EUI) (Supervisor); Victor Pérez-Diaz (ASP/Univ. Complutense, Madrid) (in absentia); Pedro Tavares de Almeida (Univ. Nova de Lisboa).
PDF of thesis uploaded from the Library digital archive of EUI PhD theses
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 nineteenth-century, 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 more 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.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI)
While the Arab spring succeeded in ousting the long-term dictator led governments from power in many Arab countries, leading the way to a new democratic process to develop in the Arab world, it did not end the old suspicions between Arab Muslims and the West. This research investigates the beginning of the relations between the Arab Muslims and the West as they have developed over time, and then focuses its analysis on perceptions from both sides beginning with 9/11 through the events known as the Arab spring. The framework for analysis is a communication perspective, as embodied in the Coordinated Management of Meaning (CMM). According to CMM, communication can be understood as forms of interactions that both constitute and frame reality. The study posits the analysis that the current Arab Muslim-West divide, is often a conversation that is consistent with what CMM labels as the ethnocentric pattern. This analysis will suggest a new pathway, one that follows the CMM cosmopolitan form, as a more fruitful pattern for the future of Arab Muslim-West relations. This research emphasizes the factors fueling this ethnocentric pattern, in addition to ways of bringing the Islamic world and the West to understand each other with a more cosmopolitan approach, which, among other things, accepts mutual differences while fostering agreements. To reach this core, the study will apply a direct communicative engagement between the Islamic world and the West to foster trusted relations, between the two.