This book discusses theories of crisis management and the radical right, to shed light on how responses to crisis influence radical right parties in their presence, discourse, and evolution. The... Show moreThis book discusses theories of crisis management and the radical right, to shed light on how responses to crisis influence radical right parties in their presence, discourse, and evolution. The book offers a comparative perspective by examining case studies with various traditions of radical right actors, presenting data on how crisis exploitation can assist in exploring, reconsidering, bargaining, and learning about the prospects of change of political parties.The book focuses on the debate on radicalization and crisis management. Similar to the already existing economic, political, post-Brexit, and migration crises in Europe, discourses of fear around the latest health crisis are paving the way for further radicalised discourse from the far right. The book looks into how radical right parties in Europe have responded to these crises. It monitors and explores how crisis exploitation impacts political strategies, opportunity-seeking behaviours, and the evolution of the discourse of radical right parties in the contemporary political landscape.Therefore, this book is a must-read for researchers, students, and policy-makers, interested in a better understanding of populism, radical right parties, electoral studies, as well as comparative politics in general. Show less
Western Europe has been confronted with several terrorist attacks over the past years. This dissertation investigates what happens after such attacks. Scholars emphasise that terrorism is not just... Show moreWestern Europe has been confronted with several terrorist attacks over the past years. This dissertation investigates what happens after such attacks. Scholars emphasise that terrorism is not just about killing, as terrorists want to capture the attention of the audience. Yet, what these audiences do after attacks has remained understudied. This dissertation looks into the meaning-making process after jihadist attacks in Brussels, Nice, Berlin and Manchester (2016-2017). The study focuses on two core actors groups - the authorities and citizens - and the use of frames, rituals and symbols. Special attention is paid to the first day, the first week and the first anniversary of the attack, for which the author has visited the commemorations. Overall, this dissertation shows how terrorism is not a successful communication strategy. After performing the opening acts, the terrorists are quickly pushed off stage, doomed to stand behind the curtains and watch a different play unfold. Show less
The Financial Crisis since 2007 is one of the most important challenges in recent decades. Starting with financing problems in the United States’ real estate market, the financial difficulties... Show moreThe Financial Crisis since 2007 is one of the most important challenges in recent decades. Starting with financing problems in the United States’ real estate market, the financial difficulties developed into a major crisis affecting nearly all economic sectors in industrial countries. Next to citizens and private companies, the public sector was – and partially still is – affected by the Financial Crisis, thereby implying a variety of direct and indirect implications for public budgets.On closer inspection, the impact of and responses to the Financial Crisis involved all levels of government, depending on the division of tasks and responsibilities within systems of multi-level governance. While the roles of the national, supranational, and international levels during the Crisis were widely reported in news coverage and academic research, the implications for sub-national government has received far less attention.The main intentions of this study are to analyse how the Financial Crisis affected the financial situation of the local level of government in the Netherlands and its approximately 400 municipalities and to identify the factors that determined variation. By following a multidisciplinary approach, the study combines theoretical considerations from the academic disciplines of public administration, political science, economics, law, psychology, and sociology. Show less
Crises can disrupt entire societies and severely affect the lives of the people within them. If a crisis occurs, citizens and other societal actors expect governments to learn from it in order to... Show moreCrises can disrupt entire societies and severely affect the lives of the people within them. If a crisis occurs, citizens and other societal actors expect governments to learn from it in order to prevent the terrible events from happening again in the future, or, at least to be able to respond more effectively to them the next time. However, government organizations generally seem to have major difficulties in learning from crises. Nevertheless, every now and then, they do manage to learn extensively, and change their protocols, implement new policies, open up the organization’s culture, establish new organizational units, introduce training and simulation exercises, or improve communication. Why is it that public organizations sometimes learn from a crisis, but other times do not? The work reported reveals the major factors and mechanisms that explain crisis-induced learning by public organizations. The research draws on data from crisis management documents and interviews with employees of the Dutch food safety services (NVWA) related to four veterinary crises; EU legislation, evaluation reports, newspaper articles, and reports of national and EU parliamentary debates following four major oil spillages; 114 post-crisis evaluation reports in response to 60 crises in the Netherlands; and a survey of Dutch mayors. Show less
Archaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted information and goods as well as a form of social storage creating relationships that could be drawn... Show moreArchaeologists have regarded social networks as both the links through which people transmitted information and goods as well as a form of social storage creating relationships that could be drawn upon in times of subsistence shortfalls or other deleterious environmental conditions. In this article, formal social network analytical (SNA) methods are applied to archaeological data from the late pre-Hispanic North American Southwest to look at what kinds of social networks characterized those regions that were the most enduring versus those that were depopulated over a 250-year period (A.D. 1200–1450). In that time, large areas of the Southwest were no longer used for residential purposes, some of which corresponds with well-documented region-wide drought. Past research has demonstrated that some population levels could have been maintained in these regions, yet regional scale depopulation occurred. We look at the degree to which the network level property of embeddedness, along with population size, can help to explain why some regions were depopulated and others were not. SNA can help archaeologists examine why emigration occurred in some areas following an environmental crisis while other areas continued to be inhabited and even received migrants. Moreover, we modify SNA techniques to take full advantage of the time depth and spatial and demographic variability of our archaeological data set. The results of this study should be of interest to those who seek to understand human responses to past, present, and future worldwide catastrophes since it is now widely recognized that responses to major human disasters, such as hurricanes, were “likely to be shaped by pre-existing or new social networks” (as reported by Suter et al. (Research and Policy Review 28:1–10, 2009)). Show less
