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In Italy, 2016 was meant to be the year of the "great reform," a constitutional revision that would have concluded the never-ending transition from "First" to "Second" Republic, a long process involving several transformations in the electoral system and party system since the 1990s. It did not turn out this way. Instead, the Renzi-Boschi law for constitutional revision, which started its parliamentary procedure in April 2014 and saw its final reading in the Chamber of Deputies in April 2016, was eventually rejected by voters in a confirmative referendum held on 4 December.

Are we prepared for the 21st century? There is room for doubt. The future seems increasingly uncertain, hard to decipher, ambiguous in its very indeterminism, sometime frankly illegible. If it is impossible to predict the future, one can at least help to shape it. To respond in a timely manner to the challenges of the 21st century, one must start by posing the right questions so as to identify possible solutions, if any, before it is too late. This is precisely the role of future-oriented studies and forward thinking as represented in this volume. Originating as it does in a UNESCO series of encounters and exchanges between scientists, intellectuals, artists, decision-makers, and leading personalities from public life, it offers a forum for an open debate, in the spirit of a new ethic of discussion, on a wide range of problems, challenges and solutions from a variety of perspectives. In short what this volume strives to achieve is to contribute to an ethic of the future.

Multiculturalism is one of the most controversial topics in both the United States and Germany.This interdisciplinary collection of essays by German scholars in American Studies and American scholars in German Studies analyze the "other" from this dual perspective and from their respective disciplines such as literary and cultural studies, political science, anthropology,and history. More particularly they examine multiculturalism in terms of national and ethnic identities, as well as gender and race, and look at the disciplines and institutions that produce and legitimize discourses on subjects such as minority literatures, feminism, and the notion of foreignness itself. What becomes clear is the fact that careful attention must be paid to the particular conditions and different ideological concepts that shape this term, i.e., the "national" historical, political, social, and institutional contexts in which it appears, circulates, and accrues meanings. Contributors: G. Welz, T. Brennan, B. Ostendorf, R. Hof, S. Lennox, A. Koenen, F. Hajek, C.Gersdorf, G. H. Lenz, F. Trommler, H. C. Seeba, A. Seyhan, A. Hornung, B. Thomas, G. O. Kvistad, H.-J. Puhle

Four years after unification, Germany completed what has been called the "super election year": no less than nineteen elections, culminating in the Bundestag vote on October 16, 1994. Four years after unification, the elections of 1994 reveal the state of German Unity and the interplay of new forces in post-Cold War Europe. This book analyzes the elections for specialists as well as for students, placing them in the wider context of political and economic developments in Germany in the 1990s. An appendix with full data on previous Bundestag elections and relevant charts on party developments enhances the value of this volume which students, scholars and the general reader interested in German affairs will find indispensable.

German unification and the political and economic transformations in central Europe signal profound political changes that pose many questions. Will post-Communism push ahead with the task of institutionalizing a democratic capitalism? How will that process be aided or disrupted by international developments in the East and West? And how will central Europe relate to united Germany? Based on original field research this book offers, through more than a dozen case studies, a cautiously optimistic set of answers to these questions. The end of the Cold War and German unification, the empirical evidence indicates, are not returning Germany and central Europe to historically troubled, imbalanced, bilateral relationships. Rather changes in the character of German and European politics as well as the transformations now affecting Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic and Slovakia point to the emergence of multilateral relationships linking Germany and central Europe in an internationalizing, democratic Europe.

No doubt, the feminist movement has come a long way, even though many of its aims have not been realized or, in fact, are still debated by its supporters and critics. It is sobering andinstructive to look back and examine the aspirations, achievements and failures of women of earlier generations, especially in the nineteenth century, on which subsequent generations of women have built. Although Germany has produced some famous and influential women writers and thinkers, no recent study exists that analyzes their work in a systematic way. This book fills the gap by discussing some of the major writers in the nineteenth century, beginning with late-Romantic writers, such as Bettina von Arnim and Johanna Schopenhauer, and goes on to discuss writers who were active in the 1848 Revolution such as Malwida von Meysenbug and Johanna Kinkel. With regard to the idea of emancipation the attitudes of mainstream writers examined range from lukewarm, such as the enormously popular Marie von Ebner-Eschenbach and Gabriele Reuter, to downright hostile, such as Lou Andreas-Salomé and Franziska zu Reventlow. The heart of the book is devoted to the leading proponents of emancipation, HedwigDohm, Helene Böhlau, and the prolific Louise Otto-Peters.

There are several important studies in Allied efforts to re-educate German civilians after the fall of Nazism. The simultaneous major program of the U.S., Britain, and Soviet Union to influence the future of German politics and society through the re-education of prisoners of war has not previously been studied. Based on extensive archival research, including hitherto unknown material from the Soviet archives, as well as interviews with participants, this book draws a fascinating picture of the war for the postwar German mind. It also explores the question of the impact of the returnees upon the two German states that emerged after 1945. The unique value of this study lies in its genuinely comparative approach which also examines the program that the Soviets introduced in their POW camps.

Although German unification has had a profound impact on European integration and economic development, very few studies of the East German economy exist. The editors of this volume have therefore brought together specialists in economics and politics who analyze such important issues as privatization, monetary reform and unemployment. The aim is to provide scholars and generally interested readers with a critical understanding of the complex processes of German unification and to identify the general lessons that can be learnt from their analysis for economies and societies that undergo such profound transformations as has been the case in East Germany since the early 1990s.

On the fringe of western Europe, yet fully integrated into the capitalist market, the rural economy of the west of Ireland seems to provide a fascinating object of analysis to the student of European folk cultures. This book concentrates on a particular aspect of that rural economy: the social organization and cultural construction of work in a community of family farms. The concept of work, which is primarily farm work, is taken here as a very elementary set of ideas, images and experiences that enable us to penetrate in the different cultural spheres that intersect life on an Irish family farm. Work, the author concludes, is to this farming community what the Kula ring is to the Trobriand islanders - a kind of Maussian "total social fact" the analysis of which incorporates a comprehensive description of a particular social system.

The 2002 campaign and election was one of the most dramatic in the history of the Federal Republic. An unprecedented last minute swing narrowly re-elected the Social Democratic-Green government of Chancellor Schroeder. The campaign featured the first-ever American style television debate between the two candidates for the chancellorship. Foreign policy, particularly the refusal of Schroeder to support the Iraq policies of US President George W. Bush, played an unusually important role. In the aftermath of the election the government was faced with a deteriorating economy and the charge of the opposition that it had deliberately mislead voters during the campaign. In this volume, distinguished experts from both sides of the Atlantic analyse these and other critical issues. Their work is based on extensive research in Germany and Washington, which included interviews with major political figures and the collection of new campaign and election data. Contributors: William Patterson, E. Gene Frankland, Clay Clemens, Christian Søe, Gerald R. Kleinfeld, David Patton, Dieter Roth, Mary N. Hampton, Ferdinand Breitbach, Irwin Collier, Helga Welsh, Stephen Szabo.

Since the late 1960s social democrats have become the dominant political force in the European Union. In fact, Social Democrats govern in no less than 11 of the 15 member states. Simultaneously, the EU has embarked on its most far-reaching project yet, namely Economic and Monetary Union (EMU); a project that was designed mainly by non-Social Democratic governments. This volume provides the first in-depth and comparative analysis of the views and policies of nine European Social Democratic parties concerning economic governance under Europe's new single currency and of the impact of the new political and institutional constellation in the EU on the process of economic integration and European social democracy.

Spanning more than thirty years, and costing over 3000 lives, the conflict in Northern Ireland has been one of the most protracted ethnic conflicts in Western Europe. After several failed attempts to resolve the fundamental differences over national belonging between the two communities in Northern Ireland, the Good Friday Agreement of 1998 seemed to offer the long awaited chance of sustainable peace and reconciliation. By looking at the various dimensions and dynamics of post conflict peace-building in the political system, the economy, and society of this deeply divided society, the contributors to this volume offer a comprehensive analysis of Northern Irish politics and society in the wake of the Good Friday Agreement and conclude that this is probably the best chance for a stable and long-term peace that Northern Ireland has had but that the difficulties that still lie ahead must not be underestimated.

Europe has seen a tremendous rise in popularity of new rightist political parties in the last two decades or so, claiming cultural supremacy of the so-called native Europeans over foreign immigrants. In this volume, European scholars from Russian to Britain have come together to examine the media and social and legal policies in an effort to determine the causes of this resurgence of rightist and anti-democratic ideologies. They furthermore suggest actions that might help combat racism more effectively.

In recent years the German economy has grown sluggishly and created few new jobs. These developments have led observers to question the future viability of a model that in the past seemed able to combine economic growth, competitiveness in export markets, and low social inequality. This volume brings together empirical and comparative research from across the social sciences to examine whether or not Germany's system of skill provision is still capable of meeting the economic and social challenges now facing all the advanced capitalist economies. At issue is the question of whether or not the celebrated German training system, an essential element of the high-skill, high-wage equilibrium, can continue to provide the skills necessary for German companies to hold their economic niche in a world characterized by increasing trade and financial interdependence. Combining an examination of the competitiveness of the German training system with an analysis of the robustness of the political institutions that support it, this volume seeks to understand the extent to which the German system for imparting craft skills can adjust to changes in the organization of production in the advanced industrial states.

Whenever asked to name his most significant accomplishment as West Germany's first Chancellor, Konrad Adenauer would invariably reply: "The alliance with the free West." Scholars have echoed his assessment, citing the Federal Republic of Germany's successful integration into the American-led West (Westbindung) as the key to its postwar economic and political recovery. Behind this simple success story, however,lies a much more complicated history: Adenauer and the CDU/CSU remained ambivalent about the ultimate relationship between Europe, Germany, and the United States within the West, torn between visions of Continental European integration based on Franco-German reconciliation and of an Atlantic community linking Europe and the "Anglo-Saxons." These differences eventually erupted into a damaging public conflict between "Atlanticists" and "Gaullists," which colored Adenauer's last years and, after his retirement in 1963, led directly to the failure of his successor, Ludwig Erhard. The opening of various personal and party archives over the past few years has now made the entire Adenauer Era accessible for historians. As one of the first efforts to use that material to re-examine existing conventional wisdom about the period, this book traces the roles of Adenauer and the CDU/CSU in shaping Westbindung. Adenauer emerges as a skilled and resourceful (if also mistrustful and devious) politician, and as a distinctly German statesman, maneuvering between allies and adversaries to shape both the Western community and the German role in it, leaving a legacy that still influences contemporary German-American and European-American relations.

Poverty is an issue facing countries around the globe, yet it is a multi-dimensional phenomenon caused by a variety of factors, differing from context with no linear chain of cause and effect. The occurrence and persistence of poverty is influenced by an interrelated web of economic, social, psychological, cultural, and political factors. Focusing on countries-in-transition belonging to the former Soviet bloc where the existence of poverty was officially denied until the collapse of the Soviet Union, this volume examines the ways in which each country is dealing with its newly acknowledged and rapidly increasing poverty. The transition from socialism to democracy and market economies has proved more difficult and costly than anyone imagined. Scholars from the six countries examined here profile and evaluate current social policies and programs on poverty eradication and provide a comparative perspective that ensures that culturally specific solutions can be found in place of borrowed solutions from abroad - solutions which have thus far ignored the cultural factor and have thus failed to deliver.

"Modell Deutschland," once admired worldwide, has lost much of its shine, due to a number ofinternal and external factors. This important and timely volume deals with the economic andpolitical pressures and challenges of globalization and is particularly concerned with their effecton social policy, labor markets, environmental policies and technological change. Distinguishedacademic experts and leading politicians discuss these problems both from an internationalperspective and against the background of debates currently going on in Germany.

The role of the state in capitalist societies has been a bone of considerable contention among scholars. The two founding fathers of sociology held radically opposing views on this subject which were reflected in the numerous debates over subsequent decades to this day. Yet, no answer has been found to the vexing question: on whose side is the state in capitalist societies? The author examines current theories and, comparing Britain and Germany, shows that they are unable to explain the contradictory social and industrial policies in these two countries during the twentieth century. Based on in-depth archival and secondary sources the author offers an alternative theoretical framework, one that focuses on the interactions among historical contingencies, the global cultural context, and political processes.