Malawi 'Hyena Man' Eric Aniva Jailed For Two Years Hard Labour

An HIV-positive Malawian man has been sentenced to 24 months in jail with hard labour for having unprotected sex with newly bereaved widows. The practice of "widow cleansing", when a widow
must have sex after her husband dies, was outlawed a few years ago.

Eric Aniva, known in Malawi as a "hyena", admitted to the BBC to having sex with more than 100 women and girls and not disclosing his HIV status. This led to President Peter Mutharika ordering his arrest in July.

The man with HIV who says he had sex with 104 women and girls. My fight against hyenas. Mr Mutharika had wanted Aniva tried for defiling young girls, but none came forward to testify against him.

Instead, he was tried for "harmful cultural practice" under section five of Malawi's Gender Equality Act, for having sex with new widows. Two women testified against him. Aniva's lawyer, Michael Goba Chipeta, said he would appeal against the conviction and the sentence.

The case has attracted international media attention and sharply divided opinion as to how widespread the practice remains. Aniva was the subject of a BBC feature into various sexual cleansing practices in Malawi. Last year, Malawi banned child marriage, raising the legal age of marriage from 15 to 18 - something activists hoped would put an end to early sexual initiations.

Trump Denies Conflict of Interest Over Business Empire

Billionaire US President-elect Donald Trump has said he is not obliged to cut ties to his business empire when he takes office on 20 January. A Democratic senator is tabling a resolution calling on him to liquidate his assets to prove he does not intend to profit from the office of president. There is no legal requirement to liquidate assets but past US presidents have set aside their business dealings.

Mr Trump also disowned far right activists who hailed his election win. "Alt-right" activists could be seen making Nazi salutes at a conference in Washington DC over the weekend, where a speaker enjoined them to "Hail Trump". Mr Trump, who has flown to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday on Thursday, is still assembling his White House team. One of America's top generals, David Petraeus, has told the BBC he would be willing to serve under him.

Media captionDavid Petraeus says he would serve under Trump, who might improve relations with Russia. Trump's promises: Before and after

Can Donald Trump get what he wants?

Activists call for US election recount

The people around Donald Trump

What did Trump say exactly?

"In theory I could run my business perfectly and then run the country perfectly," he told the New York Times in an interview. "I'd assumed that you'd have to set up some type of trust or whatever and you don't." US President-elect Donald Trump (R) steps off his plane upon arrival at Palm Beach International Airport in West Palm Beach, Florida, 22 November

Mr Trump (right) has gone to Florida for the Thanksgiving holiday. However, he added that he would "like to do something" to separate his two areas of responsibility. Democratic Senator Ben Cardin would like a more formal separation. He plans to introduce a resolution next week calling on the president-elect to adopt blind trusts or take equivalent measures to ensure that he complies with the constitution over potential conflicts of interest.

What kind of conflicts are we talking about? The property tycoon is said to be currently worth $3.7bn (£3bn) by Forbes magazine, with more than 500 different enterprises in his business empire. One example of a possible conflict of interest is the newly opened Trump International Hotel in Washington DC, the BBC's David Willis reports.

This handout picture, released by Japan's Cabinet Secretariat on November 18, 2016 shows Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe (2nd L) being welcomed by US President-elect Donald Trump (R) beside Ivanka Trump (C) and her husband Jared Kushner (L) in New York

Ivanka Trump and her husband Jared Kushner were present when Mr Trump welcomed Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe in New York last week. Mr Trump already stands to profit from an influx of visitors in the weeks leading up to his inauguration. Since the hotel sits on land leased from the federal government, when Mr Trump assumes office, he becomes, effectively, both landlord and tenant overnight, our correspondent notes.

Media captionHow easy would it be for Donald Trump to stop gay marriages continuing? Eyebrows were also raised when Ivanka Trump joined in a phone conversation her father had last week with the Argentine President, Mauricio Macri. The Argentine government later denied reports that Donald Trump had asked Mr Macri to approve a building project by one of his companies in Buenos Aires.

Trump to trust in daughter power. What else did Trump tell the New York Times? Apart from condemning the far right, he defended hiring Steve Bannon, the former CEO of radical conservative news site Breitbart, as his strategist. "Breitbart is just a publication," Mr Trump told the famously liberal newspaper. "They cover stories like you cover stories."

Media captionHail Trump: White nationalists mark Trump win with Nazi salute "If I thought he was a racist or alt-right or any of the things, the terms we could use, I wouldn't even think about hiring him", the president-elect added.

He also argued that: His son-in-law Jared Kushner - a real estate heir who has no experience of diplomacy - could help forge peace between Israel and Palestinians. The US should not be a "nation-builder" in the world. Republican leaders Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell "love" him again. And he accepted there was some "connectivity" between human activity and climate change.

Egypt Appeal Court Quashes Ousted President Morsi's Life sentence

Egypt's highest appeal court has overturned a life sentence handed down to ousted President Mohammed Morsi. The Court of Cassation ordered that the 65-year-old be retried on the charge of conspiring to commit terrorist acts with foreign organisations.

Last week, the court quashed a death sentence handed to Morsi in a separate case revolving around a mass prison break during the 2011 revolution.

But he is still serving lengthy sentences related to two other cases.

Morsi became Egypt's first democratically elected president in 2012, but he was removed by the military a year later after mass protests against his rule.

Since then, the authorities have launched a crackdown on Morsi's now-banned Islamist movement, the Muslim Brotherhood, which has seen hundreds of people killed in clashes with security forces and tens of thousands imprisoned.

What's become of Egypt's Morsi?

Profile: Mohammed Morsi

In May 2015, Morsi and three other senior Brotherhood leaders - general guide Mohammed Badie, former parliamentary speaker Saad al-Katatni and Essam al-Erian - were sentenced to life in prison for conspiring to commit terrorist acts with foreign organisations to undermine national security.

Sixteen other people, including senior Brotherhood officials Khairat al-Shater and Mohammed al-Beltagi, were sentenced to death in the case. Hamas leader Ismail Haniya celebrates the election of Mohammed Morsi in the Gaza Strip in 24 June 2012

Hamas, an offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, celebrated Morsi's election in 2012

Prosecutors alleged that the Brotherhood had hatched a plan in 2005 to send "elements" to military camps run by the Palestinian Sunni Islamist group Hamas in the Gaza Strip, the Shia Islamist Hezbollah movement in Lebanon, and the Revolutionary Guards force in Iran.

The Brotherhood, which the government declared a terrorist group in 2013, denies the charge. It says it is committed to peaceful activism.

On Tuesday, the state-owned Al-Ahram newspaper reported that the Court of Cassation had overturned the life sentences imposed on Morsi and his fellow Brotherhood leaders, and also cancelled the 16 death sentences.

Morsi's lawyer, Abdel Moneim Abdel Maksoud, confirmed the ruling, telling the AFP news agency: "The verdict was full of legal flaws."

In June, Morsi was sentenced to 40 years in prison after being convicted of leaking state secrets and sensitive documents to Qatar.

He has also been sentenced to 20 years for ordering the unlawful detention and torture of opposition protesters during clashes with Brotherhood supporters outside a presidential palace in Cairo in December 2012.

Morsi's supporters have said the trials are attempts to give legal cover to a coup. They insist they are based on unreliable witnesses and scant evidence.

Spanish Prosecutors Push Neymar to Serve Two Year Jail Term

Spanish prosecutors have called for Barcelona forward Neymar to be sent to prison for two years for his part in a corruption case over his transfer from Brazilian club Santos in 2013. Judge Jose Perals also called for a five-year sentence for former Barcelona president Sandro Rosell and a fine of 8.4million euros (£7.2m) for the club.

It asked to drop charges against current president Josep Maria Bartomeu. Rosell, Neymar and his father are set to stand trial. The case stems from a complaint by Brazilian investment group DIS, which owned 40% of Neymar's transfer rights and alleges it received less money than it was entitled to from transfer fee.

Rosell resigned as the club's president in 2014 for his role in the affair and testified in court in February alongside Bartomeu, Neymar and Neymar's father. Messi back to face Celtic in Glasgow Celtic have learned from Barca mauling. The club struck a deal with prosecutors in June to settle a separate case, paid a £4.7m fine and avoided trial on charges of tax evasion over the transfer.

Barcelona thought they had brought the affair to a close when judge Jose de la Mata archived the case in June, although Spain's public prosecutor successfully overturned the ruling in September, allowing the case to proceed. Neymar's Barcelona team-mate Lionel Messi was sentenced to 21 months in prison for tax fraud earlier this year.

He has appealed against the sentence and, under the Spanish legal system, prison terms of under two years are typically suspended. Since moving to the Nou Camp, 24-year-old Neymar has won two La Liga titles, two Copa del Rey trophies, the Champions League, the European Super Cup, the Spanish Super Cup and the Club World Cup. He signed a new five-year contract with Barcelona in October.

Political Economy and Fiscal Policy

The implication of the Soskice model is that the more coordinated a market economy is, the more likely it will be to internalize demands for greater stimulus. I will test this hypothesis against three alternative theories. First, while institutions are important, it is not the VoC institutions that matter so much as fiscal institutions. A series of studies have sought to show how and what kinds of rules can restrict the choices that politicians can make when it comes to public spending and taxation, including executive flexibility, amendment powers, access to information, and so forth (Hallerberg et al., 2001; von Hagen, 1992; 2003; von Hagen & Harden, 1994; Wehner, 2006). Hence, more restrictive budgetary institutions could dampen stimulus measures.

Another possibility is that governments’ concerns with debt credibility will limit the extent of discretionary fiscal stimulus. The logic here is that, for fiscal expansion to generate economic growth, bond markets need to be confident that governments will fulfill their financial obligations. Discretionary fiscal stimulus expands governments’ commitments to domestic and international creditors through its increased stress on budgets and total government debt, while potentially signaling excessive liabilities to bond markets. This hypothesis follows from David Cameron’s (2012) argument that budgetary constraint was the primary predictor of fiscal stimulus size during these time periods.

Finally, there is the question of party politics. Following Hibbs (1977), an immense body of scholarship has examined the expectation that partisan politics matters for understanding a variety of policy outcomes, including budgetary expansion/contraction and welfare state retrenchment/maintenance (see, e.g., Breunig, 2011; Breunig & Busemeyer, 2014; Jensen & Mortensen, 2014; Cusack, 1997; Jensen, 2010). Recent studies have suggested that the impact of party politics in understanding fiscal policy in response to recession (Armingeon, 2012; Raess & Pontusson, 2015) is limited.

Left parties are assumed to push for lower unemployment, higher social spending, and greater income equality. The expectation here is that greater left party power will propel governments to enact greater stimulus measures. For the dependent variable, I use OECD data on the magnitude of discretionary fiscal stimulus measures—total combination of tax cuts and spending increases— between 2008 and 2010, as a percentage of 2008 GDP (OECD, 2010). The values of this variable are positive for stimuli and negative for adjustment. This measurement excludes automatic stabilizers and avoids post hoc assessments of stimulus, like its effects on economic growth, government debt, inequality, and so forth.

For the VoC variable, the principal indicator is the degree of institutional coordination. Institutional coordination constitutes the degree to which firms in a production regime are empowered by the institutional complementarities in which they are embedded. Although different measurements of coordination exist in the literature, I use Knell and Srholec’s (2007) coordination index (KS hereafter). Inspired by a working paper version of Hall and Gingerich’s (2009) use of factor analysis to build a quantitative measurement of coordination, KS consists of an additive index, constructed from the results of factor analysis loadings for social cohesion, labor market regulation, and business regulation.1 KS has several advantages over Hall and Gingerich’s (2009) index. First, it uses more recent data. Second, while Hall and Gingerich use 20 OECD countries for their factor analysis, KS uses 51 countries, which make their factor loadings more plausible. Third, KS includes several East European and non-European countries for comparative purposes, some of which are used in the current analysis.

To test the fiscal institutions hypothesis, I use Wehner’s (2006) index of legislative budget institutions. This index comprises six institutional prerequisites for legislative control: amendment powers, reversionary budgets, executive flexibility during budget execution, the timing of the budget, legislative committees, and budgetary information. All data is from a 2003 OECD–World Bank collaborative survey of specially identified budgetary officials in 36 countries, including all but 2 of the countries in the current study (see Wehner, 1 For each of these three composites, there are four variables, as follows: for social cohesion, inequality, marginal personal income tax rate, marginal corporate tax rate, and public spending; for labor market regulation, World Bank-administered surveys regarding the difficulty of hiring workers, firing workers, cost of firing workers, and rigidity of working hours; and for business regulation, from the same World Bank source, difficulty to register a business, time to resolve insolvency, difficulty to register property, and stock market-to-banking sector ratio in the financial system. For more information on the factor loadings, see Knell and Srholec, 2007, pp. 42–45. 2006, pp. 774–776 for more details). Values range from 16.7 (Ireland) to 88.9 (United States).

Previous statistical evidence suggests that legislative oversight generally increases fiscal discipline (Strauch & von Hagen, 1999; von Hagen, 1992), so I expect a negative coefficient for this variable—the greater the legislative oversight, the smaller the discretionary stimulus. For the debt credibility model, I use a simple measurement of government debt: total government liabilities as a per cent of GDP. I hypothesize a negative coefficient for the debt variable, the expectation being that the size of a government’s liabilities will induce fiscal restraint. For the partisan politics model, the key variable is the strength of left parties.

The expectation is that left power ought to increase the size of fiscal stimulus. I measure left power as a percentage of seats held by left parties, as compiled from the Comparative Political Dataset III (CPDIII hereafter) (Armingeon et al., 2011). While the literature on policy change has achieved a modest consensus on the idea that constitutional structures have an impact on the capacity of political parties to effect policy change (Kuhner, 2010), CPDIII does not contain a measurement of constitutional structures for the East European cases, so I rely solely on left party strength. Finally, I include four controls. First, since this paper supposes that governments enacted discretionary fiscal stimulus principally in response to the social consequences of the economic downturn, I include an unemployment rate variable. I expect greater unemployment to be associated with greater fiscal stimulus. Second, I control for the GDP growth/contraction, the intuition being that the greater the decline in GDP, the more fiscal resources governments will be willing to commit. Third, I include a rough measure of trade openness; total exports plus total imports. Given the sensitivity of fiscal stimulus and adjustments to import/export “leakage”, the greater the value of trade openness, the smaller the stimulus is likely to be. Finally, I include a measure of governments’ bank bailout costs, the intuition being that their size will have a negative impact on countries’ willingness to commit additional fiscal resources to bolstering the economy. Data for this last control comes from Laeven and Valencia (2012), the rest is from the OECD.

Comparative Capitalism and Fiscal Policy

The dominant VoC approach to comparative political economy seeks to explain the behavior not of governments, but of firms to model variations between (and to a lesser extent, among) different kinds of capitalism (Hall & Soskice, 2001; Hancké, 2007; 2009). VoC proposes that a series of interlocking institutions— including banking systems, collective bargaining agreements, plant-level mechanisms for worker participation, welfare states, and vocational education and training systems—shape the contours of firm behavior.

These institutions establish cycles of mutual reinforcement over time whereby institutional change becomes increasingly difficult. This approach yields a bipartite classification, with liberal market economies (LMEs) and coordinated market economies (CMEs) representing different models of institutional configuration that can produce economic growth in an increasingly competitive international environment. From within this paradigm, David Soskice (2007) suggests that LMEs will be more flexible and discretionary than CMEs when it comes to fiscal policy, because the more consensual forms of decision-making in the latter generate pressures for conservative discretionary fiscal policy that do not exist in the former. This pressure is grounded in an implicit acceptance of the limits of fiscal expansion.

Tacit collective responsibility for fiscal prudence becomes predicated on the idea that interest groups that remain unsatisfied with their share of public goods will still be well-served by the longer-term benefits of a government’s fiscal tightness and the promise of material gains in the future. This logic does not play out in LMEs, Soskice (2007) suggests, because the general, short-term skill sets that characterize LME workforces, in combination with their means-tested, market-oriented welfare states, generate high levels of demand for social protections and industrial assistance in times of economic crisis. In these regimes—with fewer social protections, lower macroeconomic costs to unemployment, and many collective actors mobilized for politics— politicians will have more incentives to cater to short-term electoral pressures and engage in less disciplined fiscal policy. No institutions exist in LMEs to constrain governments’ willingness to pacify the demands of a wide range of actors in times of crisis.

The only study testing the Soskice (2007) model with a large panel dataset is Amable and Azizi (2014). These authors conduct four sets of regression analyses, one for a complete set of 18 countries, one only for LMEs, one only for CMEs, and one for the so-called mixed economies (namely Portugal, Spain, and Italy). However, contrary to the model, they find that LMEs respond more moderately to economic shocks than CMEs. The authors explain this result in terms of CMEs’ core constituency of skilled workers who would be more likely to push for expansionary fiscal policy during recessions, since job layoffs would be more likely during such periods when fiscal expansion would complement welfare state generosity. In LMEs, the lack of such a constituency, combined with the presence of stronger capitalist-rentier coalitions, suggests more political pressure for cyclical fiscal policy. Why, contrary to Amable and Azizi (2014), might VoC be a more powerful predictor of discretionary fiscal policy shift during the crisis period of 2008– 2010 than during a period of relative normalcy?

After all, Hall and Soskice (2001) and Soskice (2007) assume relatively stable economic conditions in their models, including a normal business cycle and flexible finance. Their models were not built to understand short-term policy response. One possibility is that institutional complementarities induce restraint more effectively when the exigencies of economic crisis are at their most acute. This is because the concern with public debt never entirely vanishes; governments recognize the political and social value of additional public spending and tax cuts even as they remain attentive to the dangers of excessive debt.

The highly skilled workers that Amable and Azizi (2014, p. 6) point to for explaining their results might play a different role in periods of financial crisis: since their livelihoods rely on growth in high-end manufacturing jobs that required substantial private sector investment, their representatives may be more likely to push for more constrained fiscal expansion when (or if they believe) a financial crisis intensifies investors’ worry about the impact of debt on the bond markets. Essentially, then, the common experience of economic crisis may induce fiscal expansion across the OECD, but high levels of institutional coordination foster reluctance to running up more debt. This may be connected to the shift from “social Keynesianism” to “liberal Keynesianism” (Bermeo & Pontusson, 2012; Pontusson & Raess, 2012a; 2012b; Raess & Pontusson, 2015), or it may have to do with the nature of the 2008–2009 crisis as a banking crisis that, in Europe at least, became a sovereign debt crisis in 2010.

In the current paper, I deviate from Amable and Azizi’s (2014) analysis in two ways. First, they treat varieties of capitalism as a constant by which to sort cases into their three categories—liberal, coordinated, and mixed. However, plenty of research since Hall and Soskice’s (2001) original statement explores how and the degree to which countries’ institutional complementarities change over time and within the LME/CME clusters (Hall & Gingerich, 2009; Thelen, 2004; Hall & Thelen, 2009; Hancké, 2007). Large-N analysis (Schneider & Paunescu, 2011) and case studies of, for example, Denmark (Campbell & Pedersen, 2007) and France (Schmidt, 2003; Carney, 2006) have documented and explained these changes.

Relatedly, some scholarship has sought to construct indices of coordination to show quantitative evidence (through factor analysis) that countries cluster around two poles of coordination/liberalism (e.g., Hall & Gingerich, 2004; 2009; Knell & Srholec, 2007). I follow this recent work in using an index of institutional coordination as a measurement of VoC, rather than attribute a VoC category to each country. Second, Amable and Azizi (2014) examine a long time period, from 1980–2009. However, the 2008–2010 period constitutes a rupture from the earlier years on two important counts. First, at no time during the period Amable and Azizi cover was there a protracted economic downturn of such magnitude across nearly all of the OECD. Second, governments turned toward discretionary fiscal stimulus during this period almost without exception. There is good reason, then, to consider the 2008–2010 time period as a discrete moment, in order to ask the question: how well can VoC explain the extent of discretionary fiscal stimulus in an unprecedented moment of crisis?

Fiscal Stimulus Package

Over the past twenty-five years, governments across the advanced industrialized democracies have understood fiscal discipline to be the main macroeconomic problem to be solved. Pontusson and Raess (2015, p. 1) note that “political economists seem to have become convinced that governments are no longer willing or able to respond to economic downturns by engaging in fiscal stimulus”. This paper examines a brief, but important, deviation from this trend: the discretionary fiscal stimulus efforts enacted from late 2008 to early 2010.

In November of 2008, as the magnitude of the banking system’s meltdown were felt across the world, the G20 encouraged its members to engage in discretionary spending and tax cutting to limit the social consequences of the economic downturn. The EU proposed a 200 billion euro fiscal stimulus package later that month and, since the EU lacks substantial fiscal capacity, directed the Member States to contribute 85 per cent of the total cost and design the precise contents (Cameron, 2012).

The US followed in January of 2009, with a fiscal stimulus package of nearly 800 billion dollars in tax cuts and spending increases, and Canada and other countries followed close behind. By the end of 2010, the sovereign debt crisis had created a wide-ranging concern with fiscal austerity, which has remained the order of the day since then. The discretionary stimulus measures among OECD countries during this period yield an opportunity to examine the determinants of discretionary fiscal expansion under circumstances quite different from the renewed commitment to fiscal austerity that has been so influential since 2010.

Our purpose is to test the varieties of capitalism framework (VoC hereafter) for its predictive power in understanding discretionary fiscal policy in the advanced industrialized democracies in this unusual circumstance. Some scholars have theorized about the relationship between different models of capitalism and fiscal policy (Soskice, 2007; Iversen & Soskice, 2006), and others have tested their models with time series cross-sectional data from 1980 to 2009—the period of neoliberal ascendance (Amable & Azizi, 2014). But can VoC explain the extent of discretionary fiscal stimulus in the wake of a crisis that shook the foundations of this ascendance? I show that it can. Regression analysis confirms that regimes characterized by political economic coordination enacted smaller stimuli than less coordinated regimes. This suggests that, in spite of some statements to the contrary (e.g., Bermeo & Pontusson, 2012; Pontusson & Raess, 2012a), VoC does have some explanatory power in understanding the magnitude of fiscal policy response to crisis

British Shifting Sovereignty-Unity Nexus in Historical Perspective

The British after the Second World War did not have the same necessities as most of the continental Europe; its internal and external situations were different, and thus there was no other reason for the UK to promote European integration.

The United Kingdom became a friendly external sponsor to the peaceful cohabitation between the European powers in order to prevent another conflict affecting the country’s stability. The British necessities had changed from the period right after the Second World War until the enlargement because of economic and political reasons. The country no longer enjoyed a leading position in world affairs because of its incapacity to compete politically, culturally or economically with the USA and the USSR; also, its economy was in clear decline. The solution for its problems was to be found in the European Communities with a big market and the collaboration of the member states in the international arena.

The British had asked for membership under a Conservative government, but also under a government lead by the Labour Party. So it is obvious that there was common agreement between the main political parties of the UK about the necessity of joining the European Communities. For the UK, the enlargement also meant the inclusion of Ireland and Denmark in the European Communities, and the application of Norway was also accepted, but a domestic referendum in the Scandinavian country had a negative result for the European aspirations of its government.

Nevertheless, the British were aware of the meaning of the European Communities; the Schuman Declaration was a public document, the concept of shared sovereignty was included in all the treaties of the Communities and British officials were aware that the European communities had the political long-term goal of uniting its members in a single political structure. The decision of the British was a matter of priorities, economic development and international influence and political power were more important than British sovereignty. Therefore, it cannot be said that the British simply joined a Union of trade and with the current political development of the European Union, its essence has changed and the UK should withdraw from it.

UK First and Second Petition For Membership in EU

The British encountered many problems in joining European Integration because they were seen as close allies of the USA. It provoked fears in the other members of the EEC because they wanted to keep some independence from the USA, especially France. The decision of the USA, backed by the UK, in accepting the division of Germany into two parts, alienated the British from West Germany. It meant the hidden support of Germany in favor of the negative position of the French towards the UK in this matter. On the other hand, other member states were interested in the UK’s being inside the Community, because they, especially the Netherlands, had important economic links with the British, but their influence could not stand up to the French rejection. Other supporters of British membership were important figures linked to European integration, such as Jean Monnet, the so-called “Father of Europe”, but they could do nothing against the combination of French and German positions. France had many reasons for rejecting the British application.

first, the leading position of France inside the Communities as its main political actor. The Second World War was still recent and Germany was willing to cooperate with international partners as a show of their good faith. The inclusion of West Germany in the European Communities was a big step in rehabilitating this state in the international arena. The other member states, such as the Benelux countries and Italy, did not have the power to challenge the French position. So France was the leading political force of the Communities, a position that could be in danger with another heavyweight partner, such as the UK, inside the Community.

On the other hand, British economy had important ties with the Commonwealth, an organization that included many former British colonies (see Fig. 1). It was not compatible with the European market because of the system of Imperial Preference on trade within the Commonwealth that gave practically free access to the British market to products of the members of the British Commonwealth. The accession of UK to the European Communities included the British economy inside the European market; the imperial free access would have expanded to the whole European market because there were no internal borders. So this system needed to be changed against the will of the British, who still hoped to keep some influence in world politics via their Commonwealth. This problem also had an influence on the relations of the Communities with its former colonies via the Lomé agreements; of all the members of the European Communities, only France had ex-colonies of importance. France was using these agreements to keep its influence over these territories, and including the numerous British ex-colonies in the Lomé agreement could mean the end of French influence.

Finally, the Common Agricultural Policy (CAP) was still under discussion, without its final shape, and the French government was concerned with the UK changing the rules of this policy because the British agricultural sector was very different from that of France and had other needs. Even today, the idea is still clear that when a country joins the European Union it has to accept the whole of it, it cannot join some parts of the Union and leave aside others. Once the country is a member, it has two possibilities to influence the development of European policies on the common ground of the European institutions—reject new policies unless they fit the country’s wishes, or sign a special protocol that leaves the given country outside this new policy. As France needed the CAP because of internal reasons, they could not accept British membership until this policy was approved by the Communities. As is the case in any enlargement, even today all member countries need to arrive at agreements, hence unanimity is required, which in reality means that each member state has the right of veto; Charles de Gaulle rejected the application of the UK twice because it was opposed to French interests. Therefore, neither Denmark, Ireland nor Norway, which had applied commonly with the UK, were accepted into the Communities. Eventually, the third application was accepted when Pompidou was president of France after the retirement of de Gaulle and the final approval for the CAP.

The European Free Trade Association

The European Free Trade Association (EFTA) was the British alternative to the European Communities. It was established in 1959 with signing the Treaty of Stockholm by some European states, and the organization expanded further to include the UK, Austria, Denmark, Norway, Portugal, Sweden, and Switzerland among others. The other states had different reasons for joining this new European organization—Denmark and Norway had important economic links with the UK, and thus needed to be in the same organization as the UK in order to have access to the British market. Austria, Switzerland, and Sweden had the status of neutrality in the Cold War, and could not join the European Communities because it was seen by communists as an organization against the workers of the world supported by the USA and hence against the Soviet Union.

Joining the organization meant joining one side of the Cold War against the other. On the other hand, Portugal was not a democratic country as it was under the power of dictatorship built by Salazar, and a democratic system was a requirement for joining the European Communities; Portugal could not join it. The EFTA gave international backing to the Portuguese regime plus the important economic ties the country had with the UK. The new organization proposed a different model for uniting Europe, one mainly based on trade and common agreements, without integration or any loss of national independence, following the ideas formerly expressed by the UK. T

he working system was based on the good faith of the partners and their will to collaborate with each other, reaching common positions based on consensus. In practical matters it was an organization based on industrial production trade, excluding agricultural products, an area of free trade based on the British tradition without any political meaning. The organization initially worked, and more countries joined the organization, and Europe was divided in two main markets, two main economic areas. But the member states of the European Communities were performing economically better, growing faster and increasing their economic role in Europe. At the same time, British economy had many problems and the market of the EFTA was not big enough for its economy to solve its problems.

As the UK was being left behind France and Germany, and its economy was in crisis, their government had no choice other than asking for membership in the European Communities, even when this decision was against their political beliefs based on cooperation and free trade. In practical matters it meant the end of the EFTA, because its main partner was going to join the European Communities, and hence the EEC market, with common borders against any other external country or economic area. The free trade area had no chance to grow without access to the British market, and Ireland, Norway, and Denmark asked at the same time as the UK for membership in the European Communities. Once they joined, the stature of the EFTA decreased and became a mere annex to the EEC market

Why UK Joined the First European Union

Step by step the UK faced its decline and saw the end of the British Empire with the independence of most of its colonies and its decreasing role in the international arena where it could not compete with the USA or the Soviet Union, because it lacked the economic and material means to stand equally with the new giants. At the same time, British economy was in an important recession, losing positions with other European economies that were growing faster than the British.

The previous British predominance over the world and over Europe was ending, and a new scenario arose. The United Kingdom was still an important country in world politics but the leadership of the Western bloc was under the Americans. The first European Community was the European Coal and Steel Community (ECSC), an important economic sector in British industry, so the British government was interested in participating in the new community as a way to fund the deficit of the sector and gain for British producers access to German and French markets. It was an economic sector under crisis, but it also had a strong power in British politics through trade unions.

The UK sent some delegates to discuss the inclusion of the UK in the still not created ECSC, but withdrew when the principle of national sovereignty was not respected, pointing out their interest in the trade area and political cooperation, but not in integration. For the same practical reasons, the British were in conversations leading to the foundation of the European Economic Community with the Treaty of Rome, but again, as previously, they did not take part in the new community and withdrew from the final talks.

The situation was difficult for the British because their economic performance was not as good as in other parts of Europe. It was because their European partners were successful as a consequence of the Treaty of Rome and the creation of the European Common Market. As the economies of the member states integrated in an interior market with common borders, the UK was left outside, as an external partner, losing access to an important market for them, even more important after the end of the British Empire and with American predominance in the world economy. So they tried to create a parallel community in order to gain access to new markets and end the exclusion of the British from Europe

Winston Churchill a harbinger of European Union

Winston Churchill (1874–1965) made an important speech about European integration in Zurich (on 19 September 1946). This outstanding politician, popular writer and war hero proposed an organization where France and Germany could cooperate and avoid the possibility of a new war between them. Churchill’s main concern was a new conflict that could force the UK to participate in another world conflict. He was a politician born during the peak of the British Empire and still thought of the UK as a great power in the world, so the involvement of the British in this European organization was limited to being a friend and a supporter, but never a full member. He thought of four world powers—the USA, the Soviet Union, the UK and the future European Federation. According to Churchill, the organization had to be open to all the non-communist European states, based on democratic principles with a federal nature. The involvement of Germany and France was to be decisive and the center of the organization because the main objective was ensuring peace between France and Germany and all their allies. The working system of the organization was meant to be based on federalist principles. (Churchill, 1946).

Churchill’s famous speech had a great influence on the further development of the European Union, or as he called it, the United States of Europe. The British leader spoke about the necessity of integrating Europe in order to avoid future wars. According to his words, the center of the community must be France and Germany, two states which have had many conflicts in the past and which have led twice to a global confrontation in which the rest of the states, and specially the UK, were involved. Churchill supported integration, and saw it as a requisite for world peace. He thought of the UK as a promoter of the integration of continental Europe, as a father guiding France and Germany during the process, but never as an active partner in the integration. He thought of the USA, the Soviet Union and the UK as the world powers ruling the world. The great British premier, who many times before had been able to analyze the international situation with amazing exactitude, completely missed at that time the British reality and the British position in the new world after the Second World War. British contribution to the Congress of Europe was following a similar approach. The Congress was divided in three main groups: the supporters of the European Federation, the supporters of Cooperation, and the supporters of Pan Europe, Britain being the leader of the so called Unionists, or supporters of cooperation. Their attitude towards the process was mainly positive, but underlining the importance of national sovereignty and trade.

British and European Interests

The UK was a still the biggest empire on earth right after the Second World War, and a victorious country in the deadliest conflicts on the human history, the two world wars. The British had defeated Germany twice and with that their national spirit was reinforced. The UK had to stand alone in Western Europe against the powerful Nazis; it had been the only country able to oppose Hitler’s designs, and this gave the British a feeling of exclusivity. The position and necessities of the British after the war did not precisely fit with the main aims of the forces driving to a United Europe:

1. Nationalism, British nationalism, was not seen in the UK as something negative, as something that had led the country to a confrontation with other nations. Nationalism was seen as a feeling that united the British people in their titanic effort against an external threat. The emotive speeches of Winston Churchill to the British people followed this pattern asking for a national sacrifice to defeat the Nazis. The British, united by the national feeling, could stand against any threat to their way of life. Obviously this was not a rational feeling, and this was not the right interpretation about what caused the Second World War, but was the feeling spread among the citizens of the UK. The British nation was seen as something benign in the fight supporting freedom and democracy against the totalitarian fascism. British nationalism was regarded as a model to expand to the rest of countries to erase totalitarian forces from Europe. So, the vision of Europe as a peace system to avoid conflicts generated by nationalism was not shared by the United Kingdom, and the idea to separate political power from the national level was seen as an attack to the British freedom, achieved in the war by the fight of the British nation against the German forces. The UK as the only important country of Western Europe that was not defeated during the war, unlike France, Netherlands, Belgium, Luxembourg, Italy or Germany, had a significantly different approach to the matter, and the main British contribution to the debate of Europe as a peace system was following the same pattern than what was used before the Second World War—a community of free nations collaborating freely and in good faith with the partners. The idea was linked with a gentle conception about British nationalism and was hence extendable to other kinds of nationalism. The position of the British on nationalism was supported by two other nations not involved in the war, two national states not defeated, two states that had not suffered the severe conditions of the war—namely, Sweden and Ireland.

2. The United Kingdom was still the main world power in world affairs after the war. It was Churchill who organized the world affairs with Stalin and Roosevelt. The British used to believe that their country was still the greatest empire in the world history, but the time of the British as the world’s hegemonic power was close to an end after the Second World War. There were some signs pointing to the direction of the end of the British Empire, but the long-passed triumph and a recent victory against the Axis forces made most of the British believe that their time was not still over and the British international power was still unmatched. Even the most capable politicians in the UK could not foresee the British decline: for example, Churchill believed in a new world order different from the past, with a balance between three powers—the USA, the USSR and the UK. The British politician, war hero and writer overrated the power of its country thinking it could still match the two new rising powers. The British decline from a leading position in world affairs to a middle power, still with important influence but no longer independent in its international agenda, was slow and in many cases smooth thanks to the tight collaboration between the UK and the USA. The predominant role of the UK in different parts of the world was taken for granted by the Americans as they shared the interests in many cases and the USA thus became the natural heir of British power. Nevertheless, as the Yalta Conference showed, the UK did not have any need for Europe to keep their influence in the postwar world affairs, and thus the UK did not have any interest in participating in a European association to focus on this necessity. On the other hand, de Gaulle was trying to use the European Communities to implement a third way in the duality of the Cold War. Of course, the French president wanted this third way to be led by France and financed by Europe.

3. The third main idea about Europe was economic, expanding the European market in order to increase the economic activity and hence the economic performance of the weakened European economies. The war had meant a total focus on military priorities with a consequent shock for the production. The influence of the war on the people’s life affected also the consumption and their own performance as economic agents. It was obvious that Europe needed a strong shock therapy to recover its sick economy. The ideas were multiple, from common rules to common trade. The UK was a fervent champion of the free trade in the European area as it had traditionally been in the world during centuries. Liberalism and trust in the market had the British footprints, going beyond the traditional democracy to a more free system based on the trust of the self-regulation of the economic agents. Milton Friedman’s advocacy of free markets over government intervention and his prescription for fighting inflation by central banks were treated as fringe notions by many economists (Ip & Whitehouse, 2006). Since then the British have denied the necessity of a high regulation of the market, as it can regulate itself in a more efficient way, influencing the European and the world economy in this sense. Economic cooperation became a priority for the UK and the country became an important actor in most of the proposals launched in Europe in this field, but also developed its own world trade area, including the former colonies of its vast empire. Countries of world importance such as Canada, South Africa or Australia were included in the so-called Imperial Preference system inside a community of British ex-colonies, the Commonwealth. The idea of a Common European market was against the two main priorities of British economy at that time—the free trade and the development of the Commonwealth—because it meant the creation of an exclusive economic area close to its members that could not be enlarged to other parts of the world, the former British colonies. Also the Common European Market was to be regulated by the common institutions of the organization, against the idea of free trade and deregulation defended traditionally by the British government.

4. Europe as protection from the Soviet Union or Europe as a focus of stability was less important for the UK than for other European countries. British political system is, and was, one of the most stable democracies in the human history. Since the Glorious Revolution, the role of the British Parliament as a counterbalance to the monarchy created a constitutional system envied in the rest of the world; the own British people, conscious about their achievements, also felt proud of their political system. The stability of the system was so strong that during the Industrial Revolution, the growing British working class melted into the system without threatening to break it. The system was elastic enough to absorb the changes and incorporate the new necessities of the society to the traditional establishment without major shocks. The theoretical revolutionary Karl Marx predicted the triumph of the working-class revolution in the United Kingdom sooner than anywhere else in the world because the working class was more developed on the British soil than in any other country in the world. According to the communist perception of history based on linking stages of human development to production system, the society moves naturally to communism through a normal improvement of human relations. Obviously, Marx was wrong because communism has never been a tangible threat to the UK and it was mostly successful in more agrarian societies with a small industrial working class, such as Russia. As the political system was stable in the UK and the threat of an internal revolution leading to a communist regime was minimal, the country did not need to protect any European association. Also, the British institutions had shown during the war a great resistance against adversity and counted with a high respect from the British citizens, so there was either a necessity to back the political system or the state institutions with the popular legitimacy coming beyond the national borders.

5. Europe as a way to restore the international role of the country was not a necessity to the UK as it kept its prestige intact in the period after the war. The British had suffered a long war but were still controlling the biggest empire in the world history. The UK was still the leader of the free world in Europe, the leader of democratic systems against totalitarianism, but in the postwar period the domination of the international relations of the two new world powers, the USA and the USSR changed the international scenario. The British government had alternatives to reverse its growing international weakness and opted to follow with its traditional policy of deep collaboration with the USA. The Americans had helped the British twice to defeat its European enemies. The First World War was on standby after many years of bloody conflict; the German Empire had already succeeded on the Eastern front and could then focus on the French front, strengthening its position. The US joining the war on the British side broke the balance and ended in a victory to the Allies. The subsequent Americans’ withdrawal from the world politics kept the British status in world affairs intact. The Second World War was clearly on German side with the fast conquest of France and other Western European states. On the East front, the Germans were fighting on the Soviet soil, with Eastern and Central Europe under its power. The United Kingdom was completed isolated in Europe, as it was the only important country able to resist the Nazis. The rest of Europe was occupied by Germany, or allied with Germans or in a delicate neutral position. The USA again became the UK’s savior, but this time American contribution to the war was more important, as there was no balance of power in Europe as it had been in the First World War, but only German hegemony. The Soviet Union and the United Kingdom survived owing to the technological and material support of the Americans and its enormous market economy, and once the US joined the conflict, the Germans’ defeat was decided. The US had saved the British twice from the German threat. The USA also shared cultural similarities with the UK and their way to understand economy and politics were similar. So, the most obvious decision for the British government in the international arena was to work closely with the USA. It allowed a smooth transition in the world, as the previous world power, the UK, agreed to collaborate with the new one, the USA, without major conflicts between them. It allowed the Americans to use British expertise and British allies to increase its power, and permitted the British to keep some influence in world affairs that otherwise would have been lost, as it had happened before with other hegemonic world powers. Nevertheless, the decision of the British to work closely with the USA was more sensitive than collaborating with former British enemies to build an uncertain community of common interest.

Why European Union was Founded

Once the Second World War had ended, different European groups of interest were pushing for deeper collaboration in Western Europe as they saw a united Europe as the best way to solve the European problems. Eventually these economic, political and social movements led to the creation of the current European Union. The main reasons driving the process attended to the various necessities of Europe, mainly:

1.       Europe as a peace system: A group of Europeans defended the idea that nationalism was the main cause of conflict on the European continent, the source of evil on the European level. The idea of superiority included in the concept of nation led to a confrontation between the European nations formed by European nation states. The problem was the use of the national spirit as the main vehicle of cohesion among the citizens of the European states because the nation transformed from something cultural, uniting people to the strongest political force of European politics but separating them according to nationality. The idea of Europe, understood as a peace system, wanted to avoid another conflict such as the First or the Second World War, and hence nationalism had to be kept fenced in the cultural sphere. If Europe could abolish the main obstacle to the common understanding, the unification of a cultural national group with a political state, Europe might then be integrated on the political level. At some point, political integration might lead to the state of Europe and thus wipe away any possibility of international conflict between the European nations. Europe was seen as a family of nations where citizenship should be separated from nationality.

2.       . Europe as a way of European states holding on to the international influence in world affairs: Some weakened powers of Europe thought of Europe as a solution for their loss of influence in the period after the war. Individually the European states did not have the resources and political muscle to interfere in world affairs independently, but uniting all these resources and using them for a single purpose would have restored the former European dominance in world politics, or at least would have equalized the power of the USA and the Soviet Union, keeping the independence of Western Europe and its international interest protected. Hence, Europe was seen as a necessity to defend European interests in the world.

3.       Europe as a powerful economic tool: As the continent had been destroyed by the two devastating wars, there was a necessity to rebuild European economy. Europe followed the example of progresses made in the economies with large single markets, such as the USA. Increasing the size of the national markets to the European level was seen as an exceptional way to contribute to the economic recovery of Europe. Hence, removing economic obstacles to European trade would increase the number of economic transactions, thereby becoming an important contribution to the wealth of the European states.

4.       Europe as a protection from the Soviet Union: The end of the Second World War meant the beginning of the Soviet occupation for many Eastern and Central European states. The Soviet expansion needed social instability to succeed in its international enlargement. Communism is a radical political system organizing the life of citizens from a radical point of view. The majority of the citizens of a society is conservative and dislikes social changes as long as the society meets their basic needs. The possibilities of a triumph of the communist alternative are much reduced in a peaceful society that can solve its internal problems without violence. On the other hand, acts of extremism become more popular during unstable times, when violence is more common, when the society is confused and cannot resolve its problems in a peaceful way. Then new ideas and changes are seen as a solution to the problems causing social unrest, a novel way to achieve social stability. Obviously the occupation of Eastern and Central Europe by the Soviet Union and the expansion of the communist system were a direct consequence of an armed conflict and an imposition of communist regimes by the powerful Red Army. This expansion, supported by the Soviet military forces, could not be applied to Western Europe because of the presence of American troops defending the area from any possible Soviet aggression and the creation of NATO, in which Western European countries collaborate in the defense field. Therefore, the national revolution was seen as the main threat to the expansion of communist regime all over Europe. In order to combat this internal threat, Western European countries thought of the European collaboration as a way to provide stability in their countries, increasing partnership and reducing the tensions between the countries. A peaceful collaboration between Western European countries would reduce the possibilities of social unrest, and a local communist victory, and the consequent dominance of the Soviet Union over the whole continent. Some Western European countries had important communist parties at that time, such as France or Italy, and the threat was very tangible. Other countries, such as Greece, could not keep the social peace and fought a civil war between communist and the most conservative political forces. The situation of internal social instability in Greece was resolved by a military regime by abolishing the political rights of the Greek people and bringing back, temporarily, stability by force. Europe then was a tool to create stability in the area to avoid a political and social crisis that could have led national communist parties to the national governments.

5.       Europe as an international reconciliation tool: The countries defeated in the Second World War emerged as some kind of international political pariahs after the conflict. There was not much self-criticism on the winners’ side, and the most common analyses simply pointed out the evil behavior of some European nations as the main reason for the war. The new confrontation between the USA and the USSR meant the necessity to recuperate these countries for the Western bloc and the blame for the war shifted from nations to its leaders, such as Hitler or Mussolini. West Germany became the border between East and West, the first battlefield in a possible AmericanSoviet confrontation on European soil. The creation of a powerful West Germany became a priority in stopping any Soviet aggression towards West Europe. Nevertheless, the restoration of German power was seen as a danger by many European countries because of the two world wars, so the best option was to include West Germany in a European Community where it could not act independently and attack any of its members. The idea was simple—what you share, you cannot use against the other owners. Also, West Germany saw this as an opportunity to show the rest of the Europeans its capacity to collaborate peacefully by following the rules created by all. Germany was internationally rehabilitated as it showed its capability of acting as a trustworthy partner in Europe and in the world. Also, it could be applied to other important Western European countries, such as Italy, though not to countries like Finland or Austria because of their neutrality status during the Cold War. The Soviet Union agreed to sign a peace treaty with the Finnish during the war on the condition that Finland becomes a neutral country, and agreed with the USA to withdraw the occupation troops from the Austrian soil under the condition of neutrality of the new state. The Soviets saw European cooperation as a weapon against the communist bloc and thus neutral countries could not join the European Communities until right after the collapse of the communist regime and the end of the Cold War.

6.       Europe as an economic and social development tool: The dominance of some European countries over others and its leadership in world affairs was seen by some Europeans as a direct consequence of the economic power of these leading states. The UK, France and Germany were seen as the example to follow for the rest of Europe in order to develop economically and socially. The best way to catch up with the most developed economies of the continent was creating a community that could expand ideas, abolish customs, help for a faster economic development, and support economically the transformation of the less developed members. Europe was seen as a modernization opportunity and collaborating would spread the benefits to all of Europe. This idea also had a strong social component because it opened the collaboration to all the European states, poor and rich, as far as they fulfilled some basic requirements, such as a political democratic system and economic capitalism structure. Common rules helped to expand the benefits to the whole area, but the higher development in some parts meant a source of instability for the whole. Development aid was needed to avoid conflicts and increase the cohesion between the Western European states

British View of European Union: A Different Approach

After the Second World War, the economic and social situation in Europe was severe because of the great destruction caused by the war. European states collaborated in order to rebuild their economies: the Marshall Plan, the Bank of Basel and other institutions were created or developed to increase cooperation between the countries of Western Europe. The communist bloc, directed by the Soviet Union, developed their own alternative cooperation through different plans and associations. The countries most affected by the postwar crisis were the European states that suffered in the war more significantly than countries in other parts of the world. Even the victorious contenders, such as the British, experienced difficulties in their postwar economies with several restrictions lasting several years after the conflict.

The post-war crisis in the United Kingdom had important consequences in international affairs as it changed the previous international establishment and a new world order was created. The country which was once the most important and powerful empire ever built by humanity lost its leading position in the world affairs to new world powers, the USA and the USSR. The transfer of power was a direct consequence of the Second World War because the conflict made the US and the Soviet Union stronger, and at the same time weakened the UK.

It took time for the UK to adapt to the new international situation and understand the new world and the new role of the British in international affairs, mostly as a loyal ally of the US rather than an independent international political force acting exclusively according to British national interests. Obviously there was a link between the national interests of the US and the UK because of the common values shared by both states, such as a political system based on democracy (even though USA is a republic and UK a monarchy), an economic system based on free market, on capitalism with some emphasis on the financial markets, or the language, and other cultural aspects that allowed a smooth transition from British dominance in world affairs to American leadership. These links are still strong and make the relation between the British and North Americans very close.

Nevertheless, there had been many occasions where the interest of both countries was not the same and hence the predominance of the US was shown in all its power forcing the British to readapt or reconduct its actions following the American interest. In the period after the Second World War, the best example was the crisis of the Suez Canal, in which French and British troops had to negotiate and withdraw from Egypt because of the American protection of Nasser as a key ally in the Cold War in the Arab countries.

The special relation between the US and the UK also created tensions between the French and the British, as France felt betrayed by the British acceptance of American predominance. The independence of European colonies during the postwar years was also an expression of the same international situation in a world dominated by two new powers, the US and the Soviet Union, where the former colonial powers just step aside unable to compete with the huge resources of both states in the context of the Cold War between them.

To give an example, Vietnam, previously a French colony, where France had fought a long war against the local independence, became a scenario of violent combats between capitalist forces lead by the USA and local Communists, armed and counseled by the Soviet Union. France was simply powerless to play in the same division because it could not match the capacities of the new world powers. The process of decolonization was the scenario of numerous conflicts between the USA and the USSR, where in the best of cases the European powers were assisting one of the contenders. Hence Europe was in a clear decline in international affairs, previously dominated by European powers for centuries.

8 Reasons you have Co-dependant Parent-Child Relationship

The first thing that comes to mind when we hear the term “codependent” is usually an abusive boyfriend-girlfriend relationship. However, this is not always the case. Believe it or not, most codependent relationships are between a parent and child, not romantic partners. In a codependent parent-child relationship, the lines between protective and obsessive, engaged and over-involved are often blurred beyond recognition. The caregiver/care-receiver nature of a parent-child relationship makes codependency particularly difficult to detect.

Here are a few signs to help you figure out whether your parent-child relationship is codependent.

1. The Codependent Parent Has a Victim Mentality

We all face obstacles in life, but the codependent parent believes that the other people in their life, particularly their children, owe them penance for the wrongs committed against them. Often this manifests in guilt-tripping behavior intended to garner sympathy from the child for negative experiences the parent has been through, with the end goal of altering the child’s behavior in a way that will somehow set things right.

This is where the problems begin. Rather than dealing with the traumas and difficulties in their own life through healthy means such as self-reflection and therapy, the codependent parent latches onto a child and demands compensation.

Compensation can take many forms. Many times a codependent parent will live vicariously through a child. For example, a mother who got pregnant in her teen years may demand repayment of the burden she faced by putting expectations on her daughter to seize advantages in life that she missed out on. A codependent father may demand that his son excel in sports to make up for his own lack of athleticism in childhood. If the child shows signs of taking their own path in life, the parent will use guilt to manipulate them into compliance.

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Rather than dealing with the traumas and difficulties in their own life, the codependent parent latches onto a child and demands compensation.

2. The Codependent Parent Is Never Wrong

In normal relationships, one party is right some of the time but never all of the time. In a codependent parent-child relationship, the parent is always right. Even when the child is an adult, the parent will refuse to approach an argument or even a simple discussion with openness to the possibility of being wrong. Instead, they will seek to impose their own view of the situation and “correct” the adult child, as opposed to engaging in a discussion where neither party is presumed right by default.

So rather than listening to the child's feelings and problems and learning about the child's personality and way of being in the world, every situation becomes a threat to parent's authority.

Even if it becomes apparent that the codependent parent is wrong, they will not apologize—or, if they do, it will come off as forced or insincere. The codependent parent requires absolute dominance over the child, and any admission of wrongdoing on their part would be a sign of weakness and an invitation to challenge their dominance in the relationship.

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In a codependent parent-child relationship, the parent is always right.

3. The Codependent Parent Is Overly Emotional

People sometimes end up crying, yelling, and giving others the silent treatment, but the codependent parent has refined these acts into an art form. When they feel that they are losing control of a situation or the upper hand in an argument, they will resort to crying, screaming, and other acts of intimidation to restore the balance in their favor. If called out on this manipulation tactic, the codependent parent will often accuse the child of being callous or insensitive, or feign ignorance altogether.

If the child cries or expresses hurt or anger, the codependent parent may get unusually angry and claim that the display, no matter how genuine, is insincere and being used to manipulate when, in reality, they are upset that their tactic is being turned around on them.

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The codependent parent has refined crying, yelling, temper tantrums, and silent treatments into an art form.

4. The Codependent Parent Never Listens

Many children of codependent parents complain that speaking with their parent is like “talking to a brick wall.” In fact, one doesn’t speak with a codependent parent as much as to them. No matter how valid the argument, the codependent parent will not be moved in their position. Instead, even when presented with irrefutable facts that would cause a normal person to reconsider and reevaluate their position, the codependent parent will either refute the facts or move onto a different argument without addressing the point being made.

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Speaking with a codependent parent is like “talking to a brick wall.”

5. The Codependent Parent Parrots Words and Phrases

Instead of listening to the child's feelings, a codependent parent will parrot, mirror, or mimic them. If the child claims that the parent is hurting their feelings, for example, the codependent parent will, perhaps seconds or even hours later, return with, “You’re hurting my feelings!” Whatever concern the child expresses, the codependent parent will find a way to turn it around and regurgitate it as their own, thus reversing the defensive and offensive roles in the conversation. If called out on this behavior, the codependent parent will ignore it, become angry, or act bewildered and confused.

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The codependent parent will find a way to appropriate the child's feelings and present them as their own, thus reversing the defensive and offensive roles in the conversation.

6. The Codependent Parent Has Mood Swings

Drastic mood swings can happen over a couple of minutes or a couple of days, but the codependent parent has the ability to rapidly shift from one mood to another. This is especially true when their manipulation tactics have succeeded in garnering the child’s acquiescence. The codependent parent may be yelling and screaming one moment, but once they get their way, they may be exuberant. Conversely, they may sulk in an effort to rebuff any guilt as a result of their power play.

For example, a mother screaming at her son for not calling often enough may eventually get him to give in and promise to call more. Once she attains what she wants, in an effort to keep her victory and her role as the victim, she may say something like, “No, never mind. I don’t want you to call. You’ll just be doing it because you have to.” Then, the son will not only have to call more, but ensure her that this is what he truly wants to do of his own free will, thus absolving her from any responsibility and guilt.

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The codependent parent will rapidly shift from one mood to another in order to avoid responsibility and guilt.

7. The Codependent Parent Must Maintain Control at All Costs

Control is the end goal of all codependent parents. Most codependent parents expect a level of devotion and love from their children that is unhealthy and unnatural, intended to make up for that which they lack in other relationships. Often the codependent parent wishes to garner from their child the love and/or attention they failed to receive from their own parents. This creates a dramatic role reversal of the parent-child relationship and turns it into a vampiric dynamic rather than a mutually beneficial one.

Whatever it is that the codependent parent seeks to gain by controlling the adult child, when it becomes clear that they won’t succeed, a meltdown will often ensue. If the parent controls with guilt by appearing frail and playing the victim card, they may become suddenly venomous and aggressive when the adult child refuses to give them what they want. Conversely, a codependent parent who controls through subtle manipulation and passive-aggression may suddenly become dominant and plainspoken.

It is important to remember that these dramatic shifts in the face of lost control are not a mood swing or an “episode.” Instead, the codependent parent is revealing their true nature as opposed to the façade they must maintain in order to keep things going their way. Once there is no hope of getting their way, this façade will become useless and be easily stripped away.

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Often the codependent parent wishes to garner from their child the love and/or attention they failed to receive from their own parents.

8. The Codependent Parent Manipulates – Subtly

The most effective form of manipulation is the kind that you can never be called out for directly. Examples include the silent treatment, passive aggressive comments, denial of wrongdoing and projection, among others. The codependent parent will leave the child in a state of confusion, wondering who really is “the bad guy.”

Often, the parents will be genuinely unaware of their own manipulation. Many codependent parents truly believe that they are doing what’s in their child’s best interest and execute some of the most unsettling control tactics and manipulative power plays with simultaneous mastery and obliviousness. In fact, when called out on their manipulation with specific examples, the codependent parent will often be genuinely and deeply hurt and bewildered.

In fact, the codependent parent does not usually manipulate because they wantto; they manipulate because they have to. They simply don’t know any other way to communicate with the adult child who is beyond their direct control. Thus, they will manipulate with finances, emotion, guilt, and any other tool at their disposal to maintain the imbalance of the codependent relationship.

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Examples of things codependent parents will use to subtly maintain power:

guilt trips,

the silent treatment,

passive-aggression,

withholding (of money, time, or affection),

denial of wrongdoing,

and projection, among others.

So You Have a Codependent Parent... What Should You Do?

This is not an exhaustive list, but it does cover the basic signs and symptoms of codependency to watch out for. In my experience with my own codependent parent, many of these are hard to recognize but, on closer inspection, they deviate significantly from the norms of a healthy parent-child relationship.

There is no single, quick, or easy way to deal with a codependent parent. It depends on the individuals as well as the severity of the codependency within the relationship. In some cases, the only thing the adult child can do is sever ties with the codependent parent completely. In others, carefully imposed boundaries, discussion, and family therapy can be used to maintain a healthy relationship for both parties.

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Many codependent parents truly believe that they are doing what’s in their child’s best interest.

Cultural Competence Effect on European Territorial Identities

Bourdieu argues that acquired cultural competences are used to legitimize social differences. Cultural competence is easily transformed into symbolic capital, which can be utilized as a means in the process of distinction and establishing one’s social position or habitus. The competence of recognizing and interpreting the manifestations of territorial identities is also symbolic capital, even though it might be more difficult to transform into an asset.

The responses in the data indicate, however, that respondents with high cultural competence were not only able but also willing to perceive and interested in perceiving cultural events as manifestations of territorial identities. This can be interpreted as an indication of an aim to distinguish oneself from the less culturally competent respondents. Even if this kind of symbolic capital is not easily transformed into an asset in the structures of Bourdieusian fields, it, however, has an important role in the production of the respondents’ habitus.

Even though the territorial identities are commonly discussed in scholarly literature as discursive, narrative, cultural, and performative practices, studies have rarely deepened their investigation on these identities by analyzing the differences in the notions on them between people representing different social backgrounds. The results indicate that the social structure and the variables on which several scholars have focused in their analyses on ‘cultural capital’ had an impact on the perception and interpretation of territorial cultural identities in the reception of the ECOC events.

The rise in the educational level and in the active participation in cultural events in general increased the diversity of the respondents’ descriptions regarding their interpretations of the representations of territorial cultural identities. In addition, the respondents in higher social positions were able to describe their interpretations in more diverse ways. On the one hand, the results may indicate that the more culturally competent respondents were better able to recognize and were more familiar with the diverse representations of territorial cultural identities manifested in the cultural events. On the other hand, the results may indicate that these respondents were more competent and motivated to verbalize their notions and interpretations on territorial cultural identities.

In light of the results, cultural competence and linguistic habitus seem to reinforce each other. The respondents working in expert positions were more likely to consider that all investigated territorial cultural identities were represented at the ECOC events than the respondents gaining their livelihood from service and clerical positions or primary production and physical work. However, investigating the educational level of the respondents, the results indicate that increase in the educational level did not increase the recognition of representations of the territorial cultural identities, quite the contrary. In the case of Europeanness, the respondents with the highest educational level were, however, more likely to consider it represented at the ECOC events than any other group of respondents.

The study indicates that the respondents with low cultural competence often recognized and described territorial cultural identities as thick identities. Representations of locality, regionality, and national culture were, for example, commonly described through typical and well-known manifestations of cultural traditions, traditional cultural habits, and the involvement of the citizens of the local or regional community or the nation. In addition, respondents with low cultural competence often interpreted well-known works of art and artistic projects as representations of national culture.

In general, these respondents usually described the representations of territorial cultural identities in fairly concrete terms: Recurrently organized local festivals or other big events were often described as representing locality, while the interpretations of national culture and Europeanness were often based on the recognition of common and well-known national or EU symbols and the encounter of national or foreign languages. Thus, the respondents with low cultural competence seemed to interpret the representations of cultural identities from the ECOC events by using what Bourdieu calls the ‘everyday life code’.

In addition, the respondents with low cultural competence often related the representations of territorial cultural identities—particularly locality, regionality, and national culture—to a particular atmosphere or mentality by describing them in emotive terms. The respondents with high cultural competence were able to describe the representations of territorial cultural identities in regards of their traditionality or novelty: that is, whether they thought that the ECOC events aimed to renew or rethink the predominant notions of territorial cultural identities or strengthen them. Their interpretations of cultural identities often relied on special knowledge of arts, cultural phenomena, or history. In addition, the respondents with high cultural competence often discussed the territorial cultural identities on a more conceptual level than the less competent respondents. Thus, the highly competent respondents often brought to the fore the discussions on diverse media representations and advertisement discourses on territorial cultural identities and how they were represented in them.

The interpretation mode of the territorial cultural identities among the respondents with high cultural competence resembles the code Bourdieu calls ‘artistic’. On the one hand, the results, thus, follow Bourdieu’s views on the correspondence between cultural capital and cultural choices and notions. On the other hand, the results cannot simply be explained as reflecting the ‘choice of the necessary’, the ‘cultural good-will’, or the ‘sense of distinction’—the terms Bourdieu (1984) has used in distinguishing the tastes and cultural choices of people belonging to different social classes. Comparing the range of the Cultural Competence Index between the different thematic responses, the results indicate that the range was the smallest in the case of locality, the second smallest in the case of national culture, the second largest in the case of Europeanness, and the largest in the case of regionality.

Compared to other territorial cultural identities, the respondents were the most unanimous about the representations of locality and the least so about regionality, which seemed to be the most abstract territorial scale and the most difficult territorial cultural identity to recognize and describe at the ECOC events. In general, the results indicate that the representations of territorial cultural identities were broadly recognized at the ECOC events and diverse cultural, social, and environmental phenomena were interpreted as representations of them. Territorial cultural identities embody a vast range of meanings and their perception and interpretation are connected to various social determinants of the receivers. Territorial cultural identities are constantly negotiated in discursive, narrative, and cultural practices. Linguistic descriptions of them are performative acts producing the objects the people are describing and talking about.