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21. Disenchanted Conscription: A Military Recruitment System in Need of Justification

Author:
Anna Leander
Publication Date:
06-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The Economist's point of view is a widely shared one. It also seems warranted by current trends in policy-making in developed democracies. The US, the UK, the Netherlands, Belgium, Italy, Spain, and Portugal have abolished or are phasing out conscription. Even France, mother of citizens armies through the revolutionary levée en masse, just saw (literally as the event was broadcasted as a main feature of the evening television news) its last conscript leave the armed forces. The Nordic countries and Germany have not abolished conscription, but conscripts make up a shrinking share of the armed forces, which governments plan to shrink even further. For many observers this confirms that they simply lag behind. They will soon be brought to reason and abolish conscription. But this is a simplistic understanding of what determines the fate of conscription.
Topic:
Defense Policy, Government, and Peace Studies
Political Geography:
United States, United Kingdom, France, Belgium, Spain, Italy, Netherlands, and Portugal

22. Reconsidering Economic Relations and Political Citizenship in the New Iberia of the New Europe: Some Lessons from the Fifteenth Anniversary of the Accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union

Author:
Paul Christoper Manual and Sebastián Royo
Publication Date:
11-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
The purpose of this paper is to use the fifteenth anniversary of the accession of Portugal and Spain to the European Union as an opportunity to reflect on what has happened to both countries since 1986. It examines the integration process and how it has affected political, economic and social developments in Portugal and in Spain over the last fifteen years. In our view, and on balance, Spain and Portugal have benefited from accession. Since the last century, the obsession of Spanish and Portuguese reformists has been to make up the lost ground with modernized Europe. EU membership has been a critical step in this direction. The record of the past fifteen years is that this dream is becoming an economic reality. Despite impressive achievements, however, namely, since 1986, Portugal's average per capita income has grown from 56 percent of the EU average to about 74 percent, whereas Spain's has grown to 83 percent—both Iberian countries still have a long way to go to reach the EU average wealth. In addition, the question of Iberian and/or European citizenship, and its impact on the Portuguese and Spanish, remains open.
Topic:
Government, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
Political Geography:
Europe and Spain