This article discusses the relations between the French, Portuguese and Spanish socialist parties during the transitions to democracy in the Iberian Peninsula (1974–7). It focuses on the attempt of these parties to establish a distinctive ideological trend, Southern European socialism. The main argument is that the French socialists attempted to promote their ideological line – and predominantly the union between socialists and communists – in the Iberian Peninsula during the transitions to democracy. The Portuguese Socialist Party and the Spanish Socialist Workers Party initially considered following this line. However, the radicalisation of the Portuguese revolution in the sensitive context of Cold War détente, as well as the involvement of the European social democrats in both Portugal and Spain against the union of the left, prevented this model from being further considered by the Spanish and Portuguese socialist parties. Nevertheless, all these parties showed interest in promoting a common Southern European Socialist identity that differed from European social democracy as well as from Soviet communism, considering it useful in the struggle for hegemony within the left.

This article discusses the public violence that occurred in the Bohemian lands after the establishment of Czechoslovakia in 1918. It follows the tension between the self-empowered people, who expected a profound change in their daily lives, and the state, which sought stabilisation through the continuity of institutions. Using the examples of the Železná Ruda mutiny in July 1919 and the workers’ general strike in December 1920, the article shows that public violence was relatively easily manageable by a combination of negotiations and force, for it did not pursue a clear vision opposing Czechoslovakia but rather tried to participate in its formation.

This article examines the effects of the 1974 child allowance reform on guest worker families in West Germany. As part of a wider reform, West Germany implemented a two-tiered system of child allowances whereby migrant parents received more money for children who lived in the European Economic Community (EEC) than for children who lived outside the EEC. Migrants protested the reform and with it the assumptions of the guest worker programme. However, these parents had to contend with a popular narrative whereby foreign parents who brought their children to West Germany after the reform were in fact irresponsible ‘welfare migrants’ who placed their desire for financial gain over their children's need for a stable environment. The idea that this specific welfare reform had been the trigger for large-scale family migration not only discouraged further investigation of the causes of family migration but was also used to support new restrictions on that migration.

Although scholars have recently taken an increased interest in the history of neoliberalism, the ‘breakthrough’ of neoliberalism under Thatcher and Reagan still captures most of their attention. Consequently, the neoliberal project is primarily taken as Anglo-American, while its early history is mostly studied to explain the political shift of the 1980s. This article focuses on the early neoliberal movement in the Netherlands (1945–58) to highlight the continental European roots of neoliberal thought, trace the remarkably wide dissemination of neoliberal ideas in Dutch socio-economic debates and highlight the key role of these ideas in the conceptualisation of the Western European welfare state.