This chapter investigates the strategy of duplicity exercised by the post-2000 government, both in its bid to join North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) and to become a member of the European Union (EU). It shows how EU vigilance over child care briefly led to a crisis between the EU and Romania, and how failings in the EU's untidy system of decision making enabled the Partidul Social Democrat (PSD) (Social Democratic Party) to regain the initiative after a short time. The Partnership for Peace programme opened the possibility of future NATO membership without allowing any real participation in NATO's current decision making. The EU was surrendering to the Romanian state approach of relying on changes whose existence was confined to documents and regulations. The PSD mounted a major diplomatic offensive to change hearts and minds in the corridors of power in the Parliament, Council and at the top of the EU Commission.

This chapter investigates some of the political implications of the global Pentecostal phenomenon. It then turns to the claim that the movement essentially acts as an apolitical, conservative force in societies where it is successful. The chapter also concentrates more on Pentecostal engagements with the public realm and the extent to which these can be said to be promoting or hindering democratic development. Several studies show the shift towards authoritarianism that affects many Pentecostal groups as charismatic leaders. Pentecostalism provides women with a sense of community and belonging. Its long-term impact might be the promotion of a liberal-capitalist and democratic ethos, and it is more likely to be found in the ranks of the forces favouring globalisation than those resisting its more questionable impacts. Pentecostalism might encourage the sort of work ethic that might promote liberal capitalism.

This chapter provides a glimpse of the often muscular, politically motivated, and envenomed disagreement that dominates discourse on truth and reconciliation in Northern Ireland. It is immediately apparent that this cannot support feasible consensus on the past, which is arguably necessary to the sustaining of devolved government and continued peace, much less offer any form of psychological or emotional analgesic to victims of political violence. Fractured and competing versions of the past in Northern Ireland are also ineffective ways of resolving political and social discordance, and are merely reiterations of the conflict, albeit non-violent ones. Partisan histories must not be allowed to act as expedient substitutes for heuristic methods of dealing with the past.

This chapter studies A Disaffection, one of Kelman's novels that feature a character with a working-class background. Unlike the protagonists of the other novels, however, A Disaffection's Patrick Doyle is the only one who attends university. The chapter states that Kelman describes Doyle as ‘a naive character’ and that he forces a political distinction between him and Doyle. Doyle is a character caught between two worlds, each of which he continually defines against the other. Kelman uses him as a representative of an alienated Scotland, and actively criticises education in this novel. The chapter also discusses the theme of control and the concrete references to the proper nouns of real historical personages.

This chapter takes a look at two more of Kelman's novels, namely Translated Accounts and You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free, first examining the type of language Kelman uses in his fiction, namely ‘dialect’ and ‘vernacular’. This area of Kelman's work has been hotly contested by both cultural commentators and academics. The chapter then introduces Kelman's novels Translated Accounts and You Have to be Careful in the Land of the Free, where he approaches the violence of nationality through two very different frames, although he confronts language varieties in both novels. It also studies the suspicion of foreigners that is addressed in these novels.

This chapter focuses on those women who were directly active in Euskadi ta Askatasuna (ETA), including in the military front, from the mid-1960s to the early 1980s. It analyses the gender roles, relationships and politics inside ETA, as well as evidence of women's changing activities and media representations of female ‘terrorists’ during this period. The interview with two female activists from different generations reveals ways in which these activists constructed personal and political identities within a set of ideas in which militarism was associated with masculinity and pacifism with maternity.

This study explores the relationship between Cixous's conceptions of feminine subjectivity, love and divinity. It seems to be the case that, irrespective of the critique to which religious beliefs and practices were subjected throughout the twentieth century, a certain religious consciousness is nonetheless not simply persisting, but is rapidly adapting to the needs of a decentred, deconstructed, postmodern world. Furthermore, the self that relinquishes possession of itself as the subject of experience can be understood, then, to be immersed in the phenomenal world of immediacy, and thus to become in and with the other simultaneously. There can be no space for appropriation of difference, nor for self-sacrifice, in the traditional way in which that notion has been understood, for neither self nor other pre-exists the other. Cixous's dispossessed feminine subject is, then, dispossessed of the relation to itself, on which sacrificial love has traditionally been founded: there is no ‘self’ pre-existing the moment of meeting to whom the sacrifice in love can subsequently be referred.

This chapter assesses better regulation policies in Europe by looking at the evolution of concepts, the role of new regulatory quality tools in processes of policy formulation and the question of measurement of quality. The conclusion is that measurement should not proceed by way of decontextualised scorecards, league tables and traffic light systems. The institutionalisation of better regulation policy is still low and the variance across the EU too high. The chapter discusses how indicators can contribute to the process of institutionalisation and ‘learning by monitoring’. Finally, it relates better regulation to contrasting images of regulatory governance and concludes that this policy has evolved from a set of technical tools. It has entered the territory of politics.

This chapter explores the writings of Levinas on women and the ‘feminine’. Luce Irigaray and Emmanuel Levinas shared a commitment to reconfiguring contemporary ethics. They both envisage a revised male and female relationship as paradigmatic for the changes they wish to introduce. These relationships will be heterosexual, where there are specific qualities that are ‘feminine’ and have distinctive roles for women. They both employ similar terms to describe vital aspects of the radical transformation of ethics: desire, eros, infinite, transcendence, mystery and virginity. Irigaray, however, has chosen to disapprove of certain aspects of Levinas's work—specifically those which concern his depictions of women, the ‘feminine’ and the relations between men and women. Irigaray disputes Levinas's portrayal of maternity and fecundity. She faults Levinas for viewing the child as the main creative outcome of love, rather than viewing love as creative in its own right. Levinas's mixture of conservative religious values with a radical interrogation of traditional western ethics is a potent but confusing one. It has made it awkward for feminists to speak to his work.

This chapter reviews the cyclical nature of territorial strategies in the three cases. It explains variation in responses to Europe, exploring why some parties perceived Europe as a means of advancing autonomy, whilst others viewed it as a threat. It also summarises the different interpretations of building ‘capacity’ in Europe—which has meant influence over central policy-making in Scotland, protection of competences in Bavaria, and increased resources in Sardinia. The discussion also explores parties' changing attitudes to European integration over time. In particular, it considers why parties became more Eurosceptical at the end of the 1990s. The concluding section makes more generalisable statements about territorial mobilisation in Europe by extending the model developed herein to other cases of regional mobilisation in Catalonia, Galicia, Flanders, Wales, South Tyrol and elsewhere.

This chapter explains the theoretical and methodological framework for this research, both in relation to the key tenets of discourse theory and to the empirical content of the analysis. It begins by considering the meaning of ‘discourse’ as language, practice, and context. Its multidimensional meaning and function means that discourse analysis has particular value in the study of nationalism and political change. The chapter then provides an overview of other studies in the areas of nationalism and European integration which have used discourse theory and analysis, focusing on the case of Northern Ireland. The articulation of discourse in texts offers a means by which the processes at work in a particular context can be analysed. The relationship between politics and discourse emanates from the function of discourse in the social world and, therefore, works in two interconnected ways: politics as a product of discourse and politics as a determinant of discourse. Nation-statehood is traditionally conceptualised in official discourse as primarily important in the three thematic areas of identity, borders and governance.

This chapter introduces the main themes of the book, which are all related to looking at regional party strategies in Europe. The main focus of this book is on the variety of ways in which regional parties have responded to and used European integration in their pursuit of territorial interests. There are a number of issues that are considered in this analysis, such as regional party ‘adaptation’ to European integration and identification with the EU; the salience of the European dimension in party programmes, discourse and strategies; and party utilisation of Europe-wide networks to strengthen their interests. This chapter considers the decentralising of the state; the territorialisation of political parties; regions in an integrating Europe; the Europeanisation of political parties; multi-level governance; multi-dimensional party competition; and the framework of the analysis.

This chapter explores in depth the types of territorial strategies available to regional parties in Europe. It conceptualises territorial strategies on two separate but interrelated dimensions: ‘autonomy’ strategies, which lie on a continuum ranging from unitarism to independence; and ‘capacity’ strategies that are pursued to obtain political, socioeconomic or cultural policy benefits for the region. Thus, the discussion makes a distinction between the pursuit of (constitutional) autonomy from the state, and the capacity to act and control resources. These concepts are used to develop a framework for analysing territorial mobilisation in Europe, and party competition at the regional level. As building capacity may require more access to the state, the discussion theorises on trade-offs between autonomy and capacity.