Biography.

Vögele who has three sisters is coached by Ivo Werner. She was introduced to tennis at the age of four by her parents.

Professional career.

2009.

For the first five months of the year, Vögele participated in several WTA events, needing to play through the qualifying rounds of most tournaments. During this period, she never won a main-draw match in a WTA event. Vögele also played in ITF tournaments.  In June, Vögele played in Birmingham, defeating seeded Ekaterina Makarova en route to a quarterfinal showing. Playing at Wimbledon for the first time, she lost to defending champion Venus Williams in the first round.  Vögele had strong showings in July, advancing to the second round and semifinals in Prague and Portorož, respectively.

2010.

Playing at her third French Open, she lost to Serena Williams in the first round.

2011.

In 2011, Stefanie failed to qualify for the main draw of the Grand Slam tournaments. She lost in the first round of qualifiers of the Australian Open to Lesia Tsurenko. At Roland Garros, she defeated María Irigoyen and Misaki Doi, before losing to Heather Watson. She lost in the first round of Wimbledon qualifiers to Carla Suárez Navarro. At the US Open, she defeated Lenka Wienerová, before losing to Aleksandra Wozniak.

2012.

Vögele began her year at the Brisbane International. In the first round of qualifying, she defeated Australian wild card Sally Peers 6–4, 6–2. In the second round of qualifying, she defeated Akgul Amanmuradova (6–2, ret.). In the final round of qualifying, she lost to top seed Vania King. At the Apia International Sydney, Vögele qualified by defeating Victoria Larrière, Michaëlla Krajicek, and Bojana Jovanovski. In the first round, she lost to third seed and eventual champion Victoria Azarenka 2–6, 1–6. As the 20th seed, Vögele qualified for the Australian Open by defeating Lara Arruabarrena, Mihaela Buzărnescu, and Michelle Larcher de Brito. In the first round she then lost to 14th seed Sabine Lisicki, 2–6, 6–4, 4–6.  At the Copa Sony Ericsson Colsanitas, Vögele lost in the first round to top seed Marina Erakovic. However, in doubles, Vögele and her partner Mandy Minella reached the final where they lost to top seeds Eva Birnerová/Alexandra Panova, 2–6, 2–6. At the Monterrey Open, Vögele lost in the first round to third seed Sorana Cîrstea. After Monterrey, Vögele competed at the 25k tournament in Clearwater, Florida. In the first round, she defeated Allie Kiick. In the second round, she defeated Hsieh Su-wei, and in the quarterfinals, she defeated Camila Giorgi. However, in the semifinals, she lost to Garbiñe Muguruza 1–6, 2–6. At the Sony Ericsson Open, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to 24th seed Valeria Savinykh. After Miami, Vögele played at the 50k tournament in Osprey, Florida. In the first round, she defeated Mirjana Lučić-Baroni before she lost to Edina Gallovits.  Vögele, as the ninth seed, qualified for the Family Circle Cup by defeating Ani Mijačika and 16th seed Caroline Garcia. In the first round, she defeated Jarmila Gajdošová in three sets. In the second round, she beat Lucie Hradecká, and in the third, Vögele lost to fourth seed Vera Zvonareva. At the e-Boks Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Bojana Jovanovski. Seeded fourth for qualifying at the Budapest Grand Prix, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to Rika Fujiwara in two tiebreakers. At the 100k tournament in Prague, Vögele defeated Stéphanie Foretz in the first round. Then, she withdrew from her match against Ayumi Morita. Seeded ninth for qualifying at the French Open, Vögele beat Noppawan Lertcheewakarn in the first round of qualifying 6–0, 6–4. In the second round of qualifying, Vögele lost to Julia Cohen.  Seeded eighth for qualifying at the Wimbledon Championships, Vögele defeated Grace Min in the first round of qualifying and in the second, she lost to Kristýna Plíšková in three sets.  After Wimbledon, Vögele played at the 100k tournament in Biella. She was beaten in the first round by Alexandra Cadanţu. At the 100k event in Biarritz, Vögele defeated Amra Sadiković in the first round 1–6, 7–5, 7–5. In the second round, she lost to Romina Oprandi. At the 100K+H event in Bucharest, Vögele lost in the second round to Irina-Camelia Begu 3–6, 1–6. At the 100k tournament in Olomouc, Vögele lost in the first round to Yvonne Meusburger.  As the 27th seed, Vögele qualified for the US Open by defeating Petra Rampre, Ekaterina Bychkova, and Heidi El Tabakh. In the first round, she lost to fellow qualifier Edina Gallovits-Hall in two sets.  Vögele lost in the final at the 75k event in Shrewsbury to Annika Beck 2–6, 4–6. However, she bounced back by winning the 25k tournament in Clermont-Ferrand defeating Tatjana Malek in the final, 6–4, 6–1. At the Generali Ladies Linz, Vögele beat Malek in the first round of qualifying 6–4, 6–3, but in the second round she lost to top seed Irina-Camelia Begu. Vögele lost in the semifinals at the 50k event in Limoges to Claire Feuerstein in a narrow three-setter. At the 100K tournament in Poitiers, Vögele lost in the quarterfinals to Monica Puig.

2013.

Vögele began her year by playing at the first edition of the WTA Shenzhen Open. As the top seed in qualifying, she qualified by beating Zarina Diyas and fifth seed Caroline Garcia. In the first round, she defeated Tímea Babos. In the second round, Vögele lost to second seed Marion Bartoli. Competing in Melbourne at the Australian Open, Vögele lost in the first round to thirtieth seed Tamira Paszek.  Vögele qualified for the Open GDF Suez by defeating eighth seed Mandy Minella, Stéphanie Foretz, and Monica Puig. After winning her first round match over Tsvetana Pironkova, she lost in the second round to second seed and 2011 Open GDF Suez champion Petra Kvitová. Vögele reached the semifinals of the U.S. National Indoor Tennis Championships by defeating Sílvia Soler Espinosa, qualifier Claire Feuerstein, and fourth seed Heather Watson. She was defeated in her semifinal match by eventual champion Marina Erakovic. As the top seed for qualifying at the BNP Paribas Open, Vögele lost in the final round of qualifying to seventeenth seed Mirjana Lučić-Baroni. Despite losing in the final round of qualifying, she received a lucky loser spot into the main draw. In the first round, she defeated Petra Martić. She lost in the second round to tenth seed Nadia Petrova. Seeded second for qualifying at the Miami Masters, Vögele qualified for the main draw by beating Alexandra Cadanţu and twenty-first seed Galina Voskoboeva. In the first round, she again defeated Petra Martić. Vögele was defeated in the second round by thirtieth seed Kirsten Flipkens.  Vögele began her clay-court season at the Family Circle Cup. She started off the tournament by defeating qualifier Teliana Pereira in the first round. In the second round, she upset seventh seed Carla Suárez Navarro. In the third round, she upset 10th seed Julia Görges. In the quarterfinals, Vögele had a huge win over 2011 Family Circle Cup champion, second seed, and former world number one Caroline Wozniacki. With this win, she reached her 2nd semifinal of the year. Vögele lost in the semifinal to 2007 Family Circle Cup Champion, ninth seed and former world number one Jelena Janković. Playing against Australia at the 2013 Fed Cup World Group Play-offs, Vögele lost both of her rubbers to Ashleigh Barty and Samantha Stosur. Australia defeated Switzerland 3–1. Seeded third for qualifying at the Mutua Madrid Open, Vögele lost in the final round of qualifying to 13th seed Lesia Tsurenko. However, she entered the main draw as a lucky loser. She was defeated in the first round by wild card Anabel Medina Garrigues. Seeded second for qualifying at the Italian Open, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to María Teresa Torró Flor. Playing in Brussels at the Brussels Open, Vögele was defeated in the first round by wild card Elena Baltacha. Ranked 56 at the French Open, Vögele advanced to the third round of a Grand Slam for the first time in her career. She started off with a three-set victory over Heather Watson in the first round. In the second round, she won a three-set thriller over Kaia Kanepi. Her run came to an end as she lost in the third round to twelfth seed Maria Kirilenko.  Vögele began her grass-court season at the Topshelf Open. She defeated qualifier Yulia Putintseva in the first round, and in the second round, she lost to lucky loser Lesia Tsurenko. At Wimbledon, Vögele lost in the first round to 22nd seed Sorana Cîrstea.  Vögele began her US Open series at the Bank of the West Classic. She defeated wild card Ajla Tomljanović in the first round 6–4, 6–0. In the second round, she lost to third seed and eventual champion Dominika Cibulková. Playing at the Citi Open, Vögele lost in the first round to sixth seed Mona Barthel. Seeded fifth for qualifying at the Western & Southern Open, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to Sofia Arvidsson. Seeded fifth for qualifying at the New Haven Open at Yale, Vögele qualified by defeating American wild card Katerina Stewart, Alexandra Cadanţu, and Yaroslava Shvedova. In the first round, she lost to American and fellow qualifier Alison Riske. At the US Open, Vögele lost in the first round to world No. 105 Anna Karolína Schmiedlová.  Playing at the Toray Pan Pacific Open, Vögele lost in the first round to ninth seed Sloane Stephens 3–6, 2–6. At the China Open, Vögele lost in the first round to 2011 China Open champion and third seed Agnieszka Radwańska. Vögele reached her third semifinal of the year at the Generali Ladies Linz by defeating Klára Zakopalová (5–7, 7–5, 6–0), Karin Knapp, and second seed Sloane Stephens (6–7, 6–4, 7–5). In the semifinal, she lost to third seed and eventual finalist Ana Ivanovic 4–6, 4–6. Her final tournament of the year was the Luxembourg Open. She reached the semifinals by defeating sixth seed Mona Barthel, Karolína Plíšková, and second seed Sloane Stephens. Vögele retired in her semifinal-match against eventual finalist Annika Beck at 7–5, 1-0 due to a left thigh injury.  Vögele ended the year ranked 44.

2014.

Vögele began the year by playing at the Brisbane International. In the first round, she defeated Madison Keys 6–4, 6–3. In the second round, she received a walkover when seventh seed Sabine Lisicki withdrew due to gastrointestinal illness. In the quarterfinals, Vögele lost to second seed and eventual finalist Victoria Azarenka. At the Australian Open, Vögele defeated Kristina Mladenovic in the first round 7–5, 7–5. In the second round, she lost to 20th seed and eventual finalist Dominika Cibulková, 0–6, 1–6.  After the Australian Open, Vögele competed at the Open GdF Suez. In the first round, she lost in a narrow match to qualifier Galina Voskoboeva. Playing against France at the 2014 Fed Cup World Group II, Vögele lost the only rubber she played to Virginie Razzano. France ended up defeating Switzerland 3–2. At the Qatar Total Open, Vögele defeated Alizé Cornet in the first round, 7–6, 7–5. In the second round, she lost to wild card Alisa Kleybanova. Seeded seventh at the Abierto Mexicano Telcel, Vögele lost in the first round to Kimiko Date-Krumm. At the BNP Paribas Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Annika Beck in three sets. At the Sony Open Tennis, Vögele lost in the first round to wild card Casey Dellacqua in straight sets.  Vögele began her clay-court season at the Family Circle Cup where she was the last year semifinalist. In the first round, she lost to Ajla Tomljanović. After Charleston, Vögele competed at the Grand Prix SAR La Princesse Lalla Meryem. She defeated Sílvia Soler Espinosa, and in the second round, she lost to fifth seed and eventual semifinalist Garbiñe Muguruza. At the Portugal Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Polona Hercog. At the Madrid Open, Vögele lost in the first round to qualifier Petra Cetkovská 1–6, 3–6. Seeded 12th for qualifying at the Italian Open, Vögele defeated wild card Corinna Dentoni in the first round of qualifying. In the final round of qualifying, Vögele lost to fourth seed Christina McHale. At the Internationaux de Strasbourg, she lost in the first round to qualifier and eventual finalist Sílvia Soler Espinosa. At the French Open, she defeated Anna-Lena Friedsam in the first round, 6–7, 7–5, 6–2. In the second round, Vögele lost to 28th seed and eventual semifinalist Andrea Petkovic in three sets.  Vögele began her grass-court season at the Aegon Classic. She lost in the first round to 12th seed Monica Puig 7–6, 2–6, 2–6. At the Aegon International, Vögele played qualifying. In the first round of qualifying, Vögele defeated Vesna Dolonc; in the second, she lost to first seed Karolína Plíšková. At the Wimbledon Championships, Vögele lost in the first round to wild card Jarmila Gajdošová.  After Wimbledon, Vögele played at the Gastein Ladies. In the first round, she defeated Julia Görges 7–6, 6–2. In the second round, she defeated fifth seed Elina Svitolina 6–2, 7–5. In the quarterfinals, she lost to fourth seed and eventual champion Andrea Petkovic. At the İstanbul Cup, Vögele defeated Tsvetana Pironkova in the first round 6–4, 7–5. In the second round, she lost to fourth seed Elina Svitolina 0–6, 3–6. At the Baku Cup, Vögele defeated Alexandra Cadanţu in the first round 6–1, 6–4. In the second round, she upset top seed Sorana Cîrstea 6–1, 6–1. In the quarterfinals, she defeated last year finalist Shahar Pe'er 6–2, 2–6, 6–4 to reach her first semifinal of the year. In the semifinals, she lost to fifth seed and eventual finalist Bojana Jovanovski in three sets.  At the Connecticut Open, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to American Nicole Gibbs. At the US Open, she lost in the first round to qualifier Zheng Saisai.  After the US Open, Vögele played at the Korea Open. In the first round, she lost to Kristýna Plíšková. After the Korea Open, Vögele competed at the first edition of the Wuhan Open. Seeded 12th for qualifying, Vögele defeated wild card Ran Tian in the first round of qualifying. In the final round of qualifying, Vögele defeated Bethanie Mattek-Sands 6–4, 3–6, 6–1 to qualify for the main draw. In the first round, she lost to fellow qualifier and compatriot Timea Bacsinszky. Seeded eighth for qualifying at the China Open, Vögele defeated Mandy Minella in the first round of qualifying 6–1, 6–2. In the final round of qualifying, she lost to Bethanie Mattek-Sands. After the China Open, Vögele competed at the Generali Ladies Linz where she was the last year semifinalist. In the first round, she defeated sixth seed Barbora Záhlavová-Strýcová 7–6, 7–5. In the second round, she defeated Anna Karolína Schmiedlová 2–6, 6–1, 6–4. In the quarterfinals, Vögele lost to qualifier Anna-Lena Friedsam. Last year semifinalist at the Luxembourg Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Alison Van Uytvanck. At the 100K tournament in Poitiers, Vögele lost in the first round to Aliaksandra Sasnovich. Her final tournament of the year was the Open GdF Suez de Limoges. Seeded seventh, she defeated Kateřina Siniaková in the first round, and in the second, Vögele lost to lucky loser Richèl Hogenkamp.  Vögele ended the year ranked 78.

2015.

Vögele began the year at the Shenzhen Open. She lost in the first round to compatriot, eighth seed, and eventual finalist Timea Bacsinszky. After the Shenzhen Open, Vögele played at the Apia International Sydney. In the first round of qualifying, she defeated Australian wild card Arina Rodionova 6–2, 6–3. In the second round of qualifying, Vögele lost to Lesia Tsurenko. At the Australian Open, she defeated Pauline Parmentier in the first round 6–1, 3–6, 6–2. In the second round, she was beaten by Caroline Garcia.  At the Thailand Open, Vögele lost in the first round to seventh seed Monica Puig. Seeded 11th for qualifying at Dubai, Vögele lost in the first round to Misa Eguchi. She qualified for the Qatar Total Open by defeating Yuliya Beygelzimer, Francesca Schiavone, and Yulia Putintseva. But in the first round, she lost to Karolína Plíšková. At the Malaysian Open, Vögele lost in the first round to sixth seed Kurumi Nara. Seeded 17th for qualifying at the Miami Open, Vögele qualified for the main draw by defeating Shahar Pe'er and Zhu Lin. In the first round, she beat Kirsten Flipkens 6–2, 6–2. In the second round, Vögele lost to 12th seed and eventual finalist Carla Suárez Navarro.  Vögele began her clay-court season at the Family Circle Cup. In the first round, she lost to Yaroslava Shvedova. Seeded 16th for qualifying at the Madrid Open, Vögele defeated wild card Olga Sáez Larrabut in the final round, but lost to seventh seed Mirjana Lučić-Baroni. At the Nürnberger Versicherungscup, Vögele defeated qualifier Renata Voráčová in the first round; in the second round, she lost to seventh seed Kurumi Nara. At the French Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Vitalia Diatchenko. At the 100K tournament in Marseille, Vögele lost in the first round to Maryna Zanevska.  Vögele began her grass-court season at the first edition of the Aegon Open Nottingham. In the first round, she lost to Mirjana Lučić-Baroni. At the Aegon Classic, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to Çağla Büyükakçay. At Wimbledon, Vögele lost in the first round to 21st seed Madison Keys in three sets.  After Wimbledon, Vögele played at the 100K tournament in Contrexéville and defeated Lara Michel in the first round and Jeļena Ostapenko in the second. In the quarterfinals, Vögele lost to Teliana Pereira. At the Bucharest Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Anna Tatishvili. At the Gastein Ladies, she was defeated in the first round by Johanna Larsson 6–2, 6–2. At the Baku Cup, Vögele lost in the first round to second seed Karin Knapp.  Seeded 28th for qualifying at the US Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Mandy Minella. Seeded sixth for qualifying at the Japan Women's Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Hiroko Kuwata. Seeded seventh for qualifying at the Pan Pacific Open, Vögele defeated Junri Namigata but lost to Misa Eguchi. At the Tashkent Open, Vögele qualified for the main draw by defeating wild card Vlada Ekshibarova and eighth seed Ekaterina Bychkova. In the 1st round, she lost to fourth seed Johanna Larsson. At the Generali Ladies Linz, Vögele qualified for the main draw by beating fifth seed Tereza Smitková, Donna Vekić, and fourth seed Jeļena Ostapenko. In the first round, she defeated wild card Tamira Paszek. In the second round, Vögele lost to seventh seed and eventual champion Anastasia Pavlyuchenkova 4–6, 0–6. At the Luxembourg Open, Vögele was given a wild card. In the first round, she defeated Urszula Radwańska who retired due to a low back injury. In the second round, she beat Anna-Lena Friedsam. In the quarterfinals, she defeated lucky loser Laura Siegemund 6–4, 2–6, 6–1. In the semifinals, Vögele lost to Mona Barthel. After Luxembourg, Vögele played at the 100K tournament in Poitiers and defeated Amandine Hesse in the first round 6–0, 6–3 and Kirsten Flipkens in the second. In the quarterfinals, Vögele lost to Pauline Parmentier.  At the Open de Limoges, Vögele lost in the first round to lucky loser Mandy Minella. Seeded seventh at the Taipei WTA Challenger, Vögele defeated Lee Ya-hsuan in the first round. In the second round, she beat Maria Sakkari 6–1, 6–1. In the quarterfinals, she lost to fourth seed and eventual champion Tímea Babos. At the $75,000 +H event in Toyota, Vögele defeated Ankita Raina in the first round 6–1, 6–4. In the second round, she lost to Luksika Kumkhum 2–6, 3–6.  Her final tournament of the year was the 25K tournament in Bangkok. In the first round, she defeated Kyoka Okamura 6–1, 6–4. In the second round, she lost to Ran Tian.  Vögele ended the year ranked 122.

2016.

Vögele began the year at the Shenzhen Open. Seeded third in qualifying, she lost in the final round of qualifying to eighth seed Zhang Kailin. However, due to Magda Linette pulling out of the tournament because of a gastrointestinal illness, Vögele entered the main draw as a lucky loser. In the first round, she lost to Vania King. Next, Vögele competed at the Apia International Sydney. In a narrow three-setter, she lost in the first round of qualifying to Lauren Davis. Seeded ninth for qualifying at the Australian Open, Vögele was defeated in the second round by Luksika Kumkhum.  After the Australian Open, Vögele played at the 50K tournament in Andrézieux-Bouthéon, France. Vögele won the tournament defeating An-Sophie Mestach in the final 6–1, 6–2. Vögele then competed at the first edition of the Taiwan Open. In the first round, she defeated Chang Kai-chen, 1–6, 6–3, 6–4. In the second round, she beat fifth seed Zheng Saisai, 6–4, 6–4. Vögele retired in her quarterfinal match against third seed Yulia Putintseva. Vögele retired due to dizziness after losing the first set 6–3. Seeded 12th for qualifying at the Qatar Total Open, Vögele defeated Barbora Krejčíková in the first round of qualifying, 6–3, 6–2. In the final round of qualifying, she lost to top seed Kirsten Flipkens in three sets. At the Malaysian Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Kristína Kučová. At the Miami Open, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to 23rd seed Lourdes Domínguez Lino.  After Miami, Vögele lost at the 50k tournament in Croissy-Beaubourg in the quarterfinals to Océane Dodin. At the Katowice Open, Vögele upset sixth seed Lesia Tsurenko in the first round 6–4, 6–0. In the second round, she lost to Magda Linette.  Vögele began her clay-court season at the İstanbul Cup. In the first round, she defeated Turkish wild card İpek Soylu 6–2, 7–5. In the second round, she defeated Andreea Mitu 6–4, 6–1. In the quarterfinals, she defeated qualifier Kristína Kučová 7–5, 6–2 to reach her first semifinal of the year. In the semifinals, Vögele lost to eventual champion Çağla Büyükakçay 0–6, 5–7. Vögele reached three more quarterfinals later in the season, in Bol (lost to Nao Hibino), Tashkent (lost to Kateryna Kozlova) and Limoges (lost to Alizé Cornet). She ended the year ranked 113.

2017.

For the third time in a row, Vögele kicked off her season at the Shenzhen Open, where she survived the qualification but subsequently lost in the first round to Ons Jabeur.  At the Australian Open, she again survived the qualification and went on the defeat Kurumi Nara in the first round. She then lost to Venus Williams in the second round. Also at the Ladies' Trophy in St. Petersburg, Vögele survived the qualification but then had to withdraw from the main tournament due to a wrist injury. She did not compete in any tournaments for six months thereafter. Vögele attempted a comeback at the US Open but had to retire from the second round of qualification. Her second attempt at a comeback followed a month later, at the Tashkent Open, where she reached the quarterfinals.

2019.

Vögele started her year at the ASB Classic. She lost in the first round to Sara Sorribes Tormo. In Sydney at the Sydney International, Vögele was defeated in the first round of qualifying by Ekaterina Alexandrova. At the Australian Open, Vögele lost in the first round to twenty-eighth seed Hsieh Su-wei.  At the Thailand Open, Vögele was defeated in the first round by sixth seed and eventual finalist Ajla Tomljanović. Coming through qualifying at the BNP Paribas Open, Vögele stunned fourth seed, Sloane Stephens, in the second round. She lost in the third round to eventual champion Bianca Andreescu. In Miami at the Miami Open, Vögele was defeated in the first round of qualifying by Tímea Babos. Vögele lost in the second round at the Monterrey Open to eighth seed Magdaléna Rybáriková.  Playing in her country at the Ladies Open Lugano, Vögele reached the quarterfinal round where she was defeated by Fiona Ferro. At the J&T Banka Prague Open, Vögele lost in the first round to Jana Čepelová. Seeded third at the Open de Cagnes-sur-Mer, Vögele made it to the final where she was defeated by Christina McHale. Seeded third in Spain at the Torneig Internacional de Tennis Femení Solgironès, Vögele lost in the second round to qualifier Marta Kostyuk. At the French Open, Vögele was defeated in the first round of qualifying by Xu Shilin.  In Croatia at the Bol Open, Vögele lost in the second round to top seed, defending champion, and eventual champion Tamara Zidanšek. As the top seed at the 2019 Torneo Internazionale Femminile Antico Tiro a Volo, Vögele was defeated in the first round by Italian Jessica Pieri.  Playing one grass-court tournament before Wimbledon, the Eastbourne International, Vögele lost in the first round of qualifying to Jessica Pegula. At the Wimbledon Championships, Vögele was defeated in the first round by two-time quarterfinalist Kaia Kanepi.  Seeded second and last year champion at the Grand Est Open 88, Vögele reached the semifinal where she lost to Katarina Zavatska.

2020.

Vögele kicked off her 2020 season at the Shenzhen Open. She lost in the first round of qualifying to Irina-Camelia Begu. At the Australian Open, Vögele was defeated in the final round of qualifying by Monica Niculescu.  Seeded sixth at the Oracle Challenger Series – Newport Beach, Vögele reached the final where she lost to fifth seed Madison Brengle. In Mexico at the Abierto Mexicano Telcel, Vögele was defeated in the first round of qualifying by Sara Errani. Next, she remained in Mexico to compete at the Monterrey Open. Coming through qualifying, Vögele lost in the first round to Leylah Annie Fernandez.

Performance timelines.

"Only main-draw results in WTA Tour, Grand Slam tournaments, Fed Cup and Olympic Games are included in win–loss records."

Singles.

"This table is current through 2020 Monterrey Open."

Stefanie Vögele (born 10 March 1990) is a professional Swiss tennis player. She reached her highest WTA singles ranking of No. 42 on 11 November 2013. Her career-high in doubles is No. 103, set on 12 January 2015.

Stefanie Vögeleová (* 10. března 1990, Leuggern, Švýcarsko) je současná švýcarská profesionální tenistka. Její nejvyšší umístění na žebříčku WTA ve dvouhře bylo 42. místo (11. listopad 2013) a ve čtyřhře 103. místo (12. leden 2015). Na okruhu WTA zatím nevyhrála žádný turnaj, ale z okruhu ITF si již odnesla 8 titulů ve dvouhře a 5 ve čtyřhře. Trénuje ji Ivo Werner.


Etymology.

There is some dispute as to where the placename Harlow derives from. One theory is that it derives from the Anglo-Saxon words 'here' and 'hlaw', meaning "army hill", probably to be identified with Mulberry Hill, which was used as the moot or meeting place for the district.  The other theory is that it derives from the words 'here' and 'hearg', meaning "temple hill/mound", probably to be identified with an Iron Age burial mound, later a Roman temple site on River Way.

History.

Early history.

The earliest deposits are of a Mesolithic (circa 10,000 BC) hunting camp excavated by Davey in Northbrooks in the 1970s (Unpublished) closely followed by the large and unexcavated deposits of Neolithic flint beside Gilden Way. These deposits are mostly known because of the large numbers of surface-bound, worked flint. Substantial amounts of worked flint suggest an organised working of flint in the area. Large amounts of debitage litter the area and tools found include axeheads, hammers, blades, dowels and other boring tools and multipurpose flints such as scrapers. An organised field walk in the late 1990s by Bartlett (Unpublished) indicates that most of the area, some 80 hectares, produced worked flint from the Neolithic to the Bronze Age with a smattering of Mesolithic. This indicates organised industry existed from 5000 BC to 2000 BC. The deposits are so large and dispersed that any major archaeological work in the area will have to take this into consideration before any ground work is started. Harlow was in Roman times the site of a small town (around Harlow Mill railway station) with a substantial stone built temple.

Later history.

The entry in the Norman Domesday Book reads: "Herlaua: St Edmunds Abbey before and after 1066; Geoffrey from Count Eustace; Thorgils from Eudo the Steward; Richard from Ranulf, brother of Ilger. Mill, 7 beehives, 8 cobs, 43 cattle, 3 foals." The mill is now a 300-year-old listed building and restaurant.  The original village, mentioned in the Domesday Book, developed as a typical rural community around what is now known as Old Harlow, with many of its buildings still standing. This includes for instance the Grade II listed St Mary's Church in Churchgate Street. Its former Chapel is in a ruinous state in a field which was once the Harlowbury Abbey part of Old Harlow, is Grade I listed and is a scheduled ancient monument.  Kingsmoor House on Paringdon Road is a Grade II* listed building and dates from the 18th century. It was built as a gentleman's residence and owned by local families including the Risden, Houblon and Todhunter families. It was later used as a private school and council offices before falling derelict. It has since been restored and converted into residential apartments.

The New Town.

The original Harlow New Town was built after World War II to ease overcrowding in London and the surrounding areas due to the devastation caused by the bombing during the Blitz. Harlow was, along with places such as Basildon, Stevenage and Hemel Hempstead a result of the New Towns Act of 1946, with the master plan for Harlow drawn up in 1947 by Sir Frederick Gibberd. The town was planned from the outset and was designed to respect the existing landscape. A number of landscape wedges - which later became known as Green Wedges - were designed to cut through the town and separate the neighbourhoods of the town. The development incorporated the market town of Harlow, now a neighbourhood known as Old Harlow, and the villages of Great Parndon, Latton, Tye Green, Potter Street, Churchgate Street, Little Parndon, and Netteswell. Each of the town's neighbourhoods is self-supporting with its own shopping precincts, community facilities and pubs. Gibberd invited many of the country's leading post-war architects to design buildings in the town, including Philip Powell and Hidalgo Moya, Leonard Manasseh, Michael Neylan, E C P Monson, Gerard Goalen, Maxwell Fry, Jane Drew, Graham Dawbarn, H. T. Cadbury-Brown and William Crabtree. Harlow has one of the most extensive cycle track networks in the country, connecting all areas of the town to the town centre and industrial areas. The cycle network is composed mostly of the original old town roads.  The town's authorities built Britain's first pedestrian precinct, and first modern-style residential tower block, The Lawn, constructed in 1951; it is now a Grade II listed building. Gibberd's tromp-l'oeil terrace in Orchard Croft and Dawbarn's maisonette blocks at Pennymead are also notable, as is Michael Neylan's pioneering development at Bishopsfield. The first neighbourhood, Mark Hall, is a conservation area. From 1894 to 1955 the Harlow parish formed part of the Epping Rural District of Essex. From 1955 to 1974, Harlow was an urban district.  The town centre, and many of its neighbourhood shopping facilities have undergone major redevelopment, along with many of the town's original buildings. Subsequently, many of the original town buildings, including most of its health centres, the Staple Tye shopping centre and many industrial units have been rebuilt. Gibberd's original town hall, a landmark in the town, has been demolished and replaced by a new civic centre and The Water Gardens shopping area.

Redevelopment.

Since becoming a new town, Harlow has undergone several stages of expansion, the first of which was the "mini expansion" that was created by the building of the Sumners and Katherines estates in the mid-to-late seventies to the west of the existing town. Since then Harlow has further expanded with the Church Langley estate completed in 2005, and its newest neighbourhood Newhall has completed the first stage of its development, with the second stage underway in 2013. The Harlow Gateway Scheme is currently underway, with the relocation of the Harlow Football Stadium to Barrow's Farm in early 2006, and the building of a new hotel, apartments, and a restaurant adjacent to the railway station being complete. The next stage of this scheme involves the completion of the 530 eco-homes being built on the former sports centre site, and the centre's relocation to the nearby former college playing field site.  Other major developments under consideration include both a northern and southern bypass of the town, and significant expansion to the north, following the completed expansion to the east. The Harlow North plans, currently awaiting permission, involve an extension of the town across the floodplains on the town's northern border, into neighbouring Hertfordshire. The plan was supported by former MP Bill Rammell, all three political groups on Harlow Council, and the East of England Regional Assembly. It is opposed by Hertfordshire County Council, East Herts Council, Mark Prisk, MP for Hertford and Stortford in whose constituency the development would be, and all the parishes concerned. The opposition is coordinated by a local group based in neighbouring East Hertfordshire. An attempt to have Harlow North designated an "Eco Town" was rejected by the Minister for Housing, Caroline Flint MP, in April 2008.  The south of the town centre also underwent major regeneration, with the new Civic Centre being built and the town's famous Water Gardens being redeveloped, a landscape listed by English Heritage.  In 2004 Harlow businessman Mo Ghadami won his High Court case to block a multimillion-pound extension of the town's Harvey Centre. The Iranian-born entrepreneur, who presented his case in person, persuaded Mr Justice Richards to quash Harlow DC's grant of planning permission for the development. In his judgment he backed Mr Ghadami's claim of 'apparent bias or predetermination' in the decision, as a result of the continued participation of Michael Garnett, the chairman of the planning committee, in the planning process after he had attempted in telephone calls to persuade Mr Ghadami to consent to the scheme.  In 2011 the government announced the creation of an enterprise zone in the town. Harlow Enterprise Zone consists of two separate sites under development, at Templefields and London Road, with the London Road site divided into north and south business parks.

Permitted development (office to residential) flats.

A flagship government policy to allow developers to convert office space to residential has led to a proliferation of new 'rabbit hutch' sized flats, which are then let to London borough waiting list families. These are erected under permitted development rights which mean the local authority cannot refuse them planning permission.

Environment.

A major feature of Harlow New Town is its green spaces; over one third of the district is parkland or fields containing public footpaths. One of the original design features of Gibberd's masterplan is the Green Wedges in the town, designed to provide open space for wildlife and recreation and to separate neighbourhoods. 23% of the district is designated as Green Wedge. The Green Wedges are protected from inappropriate development, through the Local Plan.  The town is entirely surrounded by Green Belt land, a land designation which originated in London to prevent the city sprawling, and 21% of the district is allocated as Green Belt. The National Planning Policy Framework states that one of the purposes of Green Belt land is to protect unrestricted sprawl from large built-up areas.  Harlow Town Park, at a size of 71.6-hectares (just under 1 km2), is one of the largest urban parks in the country. The multi-functional park has been used for recreation and enjoyment for over 50 years. This park is in the centre Netteswell ward and is between the town centre and the railway station, both of which are within walking distance of the park, which is a natural thoroughfare from the station to the town centre.  There are only 12 parks with significant post-war element on the English Heritage 'Register of Parks'. With these Harlow is seen as one of the first examples of a civic scheme to marry the modern science of town and country planning.  In 2006 the entire South East of England was affected by drought, with Harlow covered by a water restriction order, preventing unnecessary use of water.

Economy.

Harlow was originally expected to provide a majority of employment opportunities in manufacturing, with two major developments of The Pinnacles and Templefields providing the biggest employers in the region; as with the rest of the country, this manufacturing base has declined and Harlow has had to adjust.  The original manufacturing took the form of a biscuit factory, on the Pinnacles. Owned and run as a co-op, it provided employment to the town for over 50 years, before closing in 2002. It has since been demolished and the site now has small industrial units. At its peak, the factory employed over 500 people. At the time of its closure, the owner was Burton's Foods Ltd. An £8 million production line – installed in 1999 – was left to rust in the car park upon the closure of the factory.  Raytheon and GlaxoSmithKline both have large premises within the town. In July 2017 Public Health England had bought the vacant site from GSK (GlaxoSmithKline) hoping to move altogether 2,745 jobs there, of which about 500 are from Porton Down.  Nortel had a large site on the eastern edge of the town, acquired when STC was bought in 1991, and it was here that Charles K. Kao developed optical fibre data transmission. Nortel still has a presence, but it is much reduced. One of Europe's leading online golf stores, Onlinegolf, is based in Harlow.  Unemployment is frequently around 10%, higher than the national average in the UK. Harlow also has a large number of people in social housing, almost 30% of dwellings being housing association and local authority owned, and many more privately rented.

Politics.

The Member of parliament (MP) for Harlow since the 2010 general election is Conservative Robert Halfon. He defeated Labour's Phil Waite, his predecessor being Bill Rammell, who had been the MP since the 1997 election, but had only held the seat at the 2005 general election by a majority of 97 votes.  Elections to the district council are held in three out of every four years, with one-third of the 33 seats on the council being elected at each election. Labour had a majority from the first election in 1973 until the 2002 election. From then until the 2008 election no party had a majority. The Conservatives gained control in 2008, but lost it back to Labour at the 2012 election and as of the 2018 election the council was composed of the following councillors:-

Transport.

Rail.

Harlow is served by two railway stations, Harlow Town railway station and Harlow Mill railway station. There is also a bus service to Epping tube station on the London Underground.

Road.

Harlow is reached from junction 7 of the M11 motorway, which runs from London to Cambridge, placing it within a short distance of Stansted Airport and the A120 and the orbital M25 motorway. The M11 motorway was originally planned to run to the west of Harlow, not the east as it does today. Having planned for one of the two big industrial estates to be built to the west of the town for easy motorway access, Sir Fredrick Gibberd was appalled when the motorway was eventually built to the east of the town instead, describing it as "just about the most monstrous thing to ever happen to me as a planner" during a 1982 interview. Running through the town is the A414, a major road from Hertford to Chelmsford and linking the town with the A10 to the west. Another major road running from Harlow is the A1184, which also leads to the nearby town of Bishop's Stortford.

Air.

Bishop's Stortford is the closest large town to London Stansted Airport, though Harlow is only 10 miles from this major transport hub, and therefore provides several hundred airport employees. The airport operator withdrew a planning application for a second runway after the General Election of 2010, when all major political parties opposed it.

Bus.

Harlow has an extensive bus network and serves as a regional hub for the local area, with operators such as Arriva (Herts and Essex) and Trustybus. There are links to many other local towns and villages such as Chelmsford City, Epping and Bishops Stortford.

Harlow First Avenue Multi-Modal Corridor.

Essex County Council was involved in development to Harlow's First Avenue, which was intended to reduce congestion and create better transport connections between the Newhall housing developments. The scheme was implemented in two phases, each phase focusing on developing First Avenue on either side of Howard Way. Phase two had an estimated cost of £4.4 million and was due to be completed in early 2010, phase one is already complete and is listed as having had £3.6 million of funding from the Community Infrastructure Fund (CIF). The scheme includes construction of a shared use cycleway and development to the bus service along First Avenue and into the Newhall development site where 'high quality bus' services between Harlow town centre and Harlow Town Railway station are listed as part of the intentions of the development.

Healthcare.

Harlow is served by the NHS Princess Alexandra Hospital, situated on the edge of The High, which is the main Town Centre area of Harlow. This hospital has a 24-hour Accident & Emergency and Urgent Care Centre.

Education.

Harlow contains six state-funded secondary schools:  St. Nicholas School is an independent school in the town while Harlow College provides sixth form and further education and St Mark's West Essex Catholic School also provides sixth form education.  Brays Grove Community School and Specialist Arts College closed down in June 2008 due to decreasing pupil numbers over a number of years. Following the schools closure, the site was demolished and redeveloped into a £23 million state of the art Academy which Passmores School and Technology College relocated to in September 2011 opening as Passmores Academy.  In the 1980s a further two secondary schools were closed, Latton Bush (now a commercial centre and recreational centre) and Netteswell (now forms part of the Harlow College Campus) is a major further educational centre, covering GCSE's, A-Levels, and many vocational subjects including Hair and Beauty Therapy, Construction, Mechanics, ICT, and a new centre for engineering recently opened. The college is currently under major regeneration and is due to open a new university centre in partnership with Anglia Ruskin University, covering mostly Foundation degrees in a variety of subjects relevant to local employers' needs.  An international campus of Memorial University of Newfoundland is located in Old Harlow.

Sport and leisure.

Cricket.

Harlow Town Cricket Club was formed in 1960 as Stort Cricket Club and plays at Ash Tree Field. The club plays in division 2 of the Shepherd Neame Essex League, runs a junior section that play in the West Essex District Cricket Board League and has a girls team which play other girls teams in the county.  Harlow Town Cricket Club's Pavilion recently underwent a six figure refurbishment to promote women's and disabled cricket in Harlow and the whole of Essex. Essex County Cricket Club Ladies and disability sections use the club as well as the England disability teams.  Harlow has four cricket clubs. Harlow Cricket Club play in Division 3 of the Shepherd Neame Essex League and is based in Old Harlow. The club runs a junior section that play in the West Essex District Cricket Board League. Netteswell and Burnt Mill Cricket Club are based at Harlow Cricket Club, they are a social team that was founded around 1889. Near neighbours Potter Street and Church Langley Cricket Club play in the Herts and Essex League.

Football.

The town's football club Harlow Town F.C. play in the Isthmian League South Central Division, having been relegated from the Premier Division in the 2018/19 season.  The club is best known for its extended run in the 1979-80 FA Cup, where they reached the Fourth Round of the competition. This included wins against established Football League sides Southend United and most famously a 1-0 win over Leicester City in a replay, having drawn 1-1 at Filbert Street. Harlow were eventually eliminated by Watford, narrowly losing 4-3.  The club built a new stadium in 2006 at Barrows Farm, now named The Harlow Arena, with the old Harlow Sports Centre being converted into housing. Les Smith, a Harlow resident, represented Great Britain at the 1992 Barcelona Paralympic Games. Les became one of the first disabled people to become a qualified football coach in 1993.

Greyhound racing.

The Harlow Greyhound Stadium has been at its present site for over 20 years and has regular race meetings each week as well as hosting other sporting events.

Rugby Union.

Harlow Rugby Football Club moved from Ram Gorse to a new location in 2017. The first team plays in the London and South East Division IIl North East league.Currently training grounds located near Pennymead

Other sports facilities.

The town is the site of Harlow sports centre built in 1960. The building was replaced by the Harlow Leisure Park, built near Harlow College as part of the Gateway Project.  In 2010s investments have included its skatepark next to Burnt Mill School. The project has been funded by the investment of over £300,000, largely from Harlow Council with £57,500 from Sport England. The park is floodlit. The 650sq metre park is made from concrete, and has a bowl as well as a street course which contains quarter pipes, flat banks, rails and steps.

Art and culture.

Harlow is the home to a major collection of public sculptures (over 100 in total) by artists such as Auguste Rodin, Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and Ralph Brown. Many of these are owned by the Harlow Art Trust, an organisation set up in 1953 by the lead architect of Harlow Frederick Gibberd. Gibberd had idealistic notions of the New Town as a place where people who might not normally have access to art could enjoy great sculptures by great artists on every street corner. Consequently, almost all of Harlow's sculpture collection is in the open air, in shopping centres, housing estates and parks around the town.  In 2009 Harlow Council voted to celebrate Harlow's collection of sculpture by branding Harlow as 'Harlow Sculpture Town – The World's First Sculpture Town'. Harlow Sculpture Town began as an initiative from Harlow Art Trust, presenting itself as 'Sculpture Town', in a similar way to Hay-on-Wye's presentation of itself as Booktown.  As part of the 'Sculpture Town' branding, Harlow is also home to the Gibberd Garden, the former home of Frederick and Elizabeth Gibberd, which is a managed twentieth-century garden, and home to some of the Gibberd's private sculpture collection. The Gibberd Gallery, in the Civic Centre, contains a collection of twentieth-century watercolours and temporary exhibitions.  Harlow's Playhouse Theatre is in the town.  Harlow has a local museum, which hold exhibitions and which contains artefacts on Harlow's historic past, charting the story of the town through the ages. Harlow Museum is in Muskham Road, and is set within the grounds of a sixteenth-century manor building with walled gardens. The museum is currently operated by Science Alive, who also run the Time Machine Gallery at the Leisurezone. The museum is run in conjunction with the Essex Records Office (ERO) which holds family history archives in the search room. Admission to the museum is currently free, but visitors are encouraged to make a donation to ensure future maintenance of services.  The Town of Harlow and Harlow New Town are cited in the song "Get 'Em Out by Friday", by progressive rock group Genesis, on their 1972 album "Foxtrot".  Harlow was home to The Square, named one of the Top 10 Small Venues in the UK by NME, but the venue was closed due to re-development of the site, and is currently undergoing demolition.

Harlow is a town and local government district in the west of Essex, England. A new town, situated on the border with Hertfordshire and London, Harlow occupies a large area of land on the south bank of the upper Stort Valley, which has been made navigable through other towns and features a canal section near its watermill. Old Harlow is a village-size suburb founded by the early medieval age and most of its high street buildings are early Victorian and residential, mostly protected by one of the Conservation Areas in the district. In Old Harlow is a field named Harlowbury, a de-settled monastic area which has the remains of a chapel, a scheduled ancient monument.

Harlow je bývalé „nové“ město a nyní samosprávné město a obvod místní samosprávy v hrabství Essex v Anglii. Město leží na západě hrabství při hranici s Hertfordshire, v údolí řeky Stort, nachází se v blízkosti dálnice M11 a je součástí londýnského předměstí. Město má v současnosti 78 768 obyvatel (odhad z roku 2005).


Events.

At 10:25 CEST, a time bomb hidden in an unattended suitcase detonated in an air-conditioned waiting room at the Bologna station, which was full of people seeking refuge from the August heat. The explosion collapsed the roof of the waiting room, destroyed most of the main building, and hit the Ancona–Chiasso train which was waiting at the first platform.  The station was full of tourists that Saturday, and the city was unprepared for a major disaster. Many passers-by and travelers provided first aid to victims and helped rescue people who were buried under the rubble.  Due to the large number of casualties and an insufficient number of emergency vehicles available to transport the injured to hospitals, firefighters used buses, private cars, and taxis. Some doctors and hospital staff returned early from vacation to care for the victims, and hospital departments which were closed for the summer holidays were reopened to accommodate the casualties.  After the attack, large demonstrations were held in Piazza Maggiore (Bologna's central square). Harsh criticism was directed at government representatives who attended the 6 August funerals of the victims in the Basilica San Petronio. The only applause was reserved for President Sandro Pertini, who arrived by helicopter in Bologna at 5:30 pm the day of the massacre and tearfully said: "I have no words; we are facing the most criminal enterprise that has ever taken place in Italy."  The #37 bus (used to transport victims) and the clock (stopped at 10:25) were symbols of the massacre. The attack was the worst atrocity in Italy since World War II.

Investigation.

The Italian government, led by Christian Democratic Prime Minister Francesco Cossiga, first assumed that the incident was due to an accidental explosion of an old boiler in the station's basement. Evidence, however, soon pointed to terrorism. "L'Unità", the Italian Communist Party (PCI) newspaper, attributed responsibility for the attack to neo-fascists on 3 August. Later, in a special session of the Senate, Cossiga also supported the theory that neo-fascists were behind the attack: "Unlike leftist terrorism, which strikes at the heart of the state through its representatives, right-wing terrorism prefers acts such as massacres because acts of extreme violence promote panic and impulsive reactions." The bomb was later found to be composed of of explosives: of TNT and Composition B and of T4 (nitroglycerin for civil use).

False leads.

Shortly after the bombing, the Agenzia Nazionale Stampa Associata press agency received a call from an individual claiming to represent NAR and claiming responsibility. The call later proved fake, originating instead from the Florence office of SISMI (the Italian Military Secret Service). Federigo Manucci Benincasa, the director of SISMI's Florence branch, was later charged with obstruction of justice.  A Lebanese connection was manufactured in September 1980 involving Al Fatah, Phalangists, Italian radicals and Swiss journalists tied to the Italian intelligence community, who supplied investigators with fake notes, memos, and reports. This was followed by a KGB connection concocted by intelligence head General Giuseppe Santovito, a member of P2, and Francesco Pazienza.  Generals Pietro Musumeci, another member of P2, and Belmonte of SISMI had a police sergeant put a suitcase full of similar explosives on a train in Bologna. The suitcase also contained personal items belonging to two right-wing extremists, a Frenchman, and a German. Musumeci also produced a phony dossier, entitled "Terror on trains". He was charged with falsifying evidence to incriminate Roberto Fiore and Gabriele Adinolfi, two leaders of the far-right Terza Posizione who had fled to London. Both Terza Posizione leaders said that Musumeci was trying to divert attention from P2 head Licio Gelli. Musumeci and Belmonte were convicted of obstructing the investigation.

Prosecution.

The attack has been attributed to the NAR (Armed Revolutionary Nuclei), a neo-fascist terrorist organization. A long, controversial court case began after the bombing. Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti were sentenced to life imprisonment.  The Supreme Court upheld the conviction of Luigi Ciavardini, a NAR member with close ties to Terza Posizione, in April 2007. Ciavardini received a 30-year prison sentence for his role in the attack. He had been arrested after the armed robbery of the Banca Unicredito di Roma on 15 September 2005. Ciavardini was also charged with the assassinations of Francesco Evangelista on 28 May 1980 and Judge Mario Amato on 23 June 1980.  On 26 August 1980, the prosecutor of Bologna issued twenty-eight arrest warrants for far-right militants of the NAR and Terza Posizione. Among those arrested were Massimo Morsello (future founder of the neo-fascist organization and political party Forza Nuova), Francesca Mambro, Aldo Semerari, Maurizio Neri, and Paolo Signorelli. They were interrogated in Ferrara, Rome, Padua, and Parma. All were released from prison in 1981.  The first trial began in Bologna on 9 March 1987. Massimiliano Fachini, Valerio Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro, Sergio Picciafuoco, Roberto Rinani and Paolo Signorelli were charged with murder. Gilberto Cavallini, Fachini, Fioravanti, Egidio Giuliani, Marcello Iannilli, Mambro, Giovanni Melioli, Picciafuoco, Roberto Raho, Rinani and Signorelli were charged with forming an armed gang. Marco Ballan, Giuseppe Belmonte, Fabio De Felice, Stefano Delle Chiaie, Fachini, Licio Gelli, Maurizio Giorgi, Pietro Musumeci, Francesco Pazienza, Signorelli and Adriano Tilgher were charged with subversive association. Belmonte, Gelli, Musumeci and Pazienza were charged with defamation.  On 11 July 1988, Fachini, Fioravanti, Mambro and Picciafuoco were sentenced to life imprisonment for murder; Rinani and Signorelli were acquitted. Cavallini, Fachini, Fioravanti, Giuliani, Mambro, Picciafuoco, Rinani and Signorelli were convicted of forming an armed gang; Iannilli, Melioli and Raho were acquitted. Ballan, Belmonte, Felice, Delle Chiaie, Fachini, Gelli, Giorgi, Musumeci, Pazienza, Signorelli and Tilgher were acquitted of subversive association. Belmonte, Gelli, Musumeci and Pazienza were convicted of defamation. The appeal process began on 25 October 1989.  On appeal, Fachini, Fioravanti, Mambro, Picciafuoco, Rinani and Signorelli were acquitted of murder on 18 July 1990. Cavallini, Fioravanti, Mambro and Giuliani were convicted of forming an armed gang. Belmonte and Musumeci were convicted of defamation, and the other defendants were acquitted.  On 12 February 1992, the Supreme Court of Cassation acquitted Rinani and Signorelli of murder; Signorelli was also acquitted of forming an armed gang and subversive association. The court also acquitted other defendants, canceled the judgment and ordered a new trial because the sentences were "illogical, incoherent, not assessing proofs and evidence in good terms, not taking into account the facts preceding and following the event, unmotivated or poorly motivated, in some parts the judges supporting unlikely arguments that not even the defense had argued".  The new trial began on 11 October 1993. Massimiliano Fachini, Valerio Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro and Sergio Picciafuoco were charged with murder; Gilberto Cavallini, Massimiliano Fachini, Egidio Giuliani, Valerio Fioravanti, Francesca Mambro, Sergio Picciafuoco and Roberto Rinani were charged with forming an armed gang, and Giuseppe Belmonte, Licio Gelli, Pietro Musumeci, and Francesco Pazienza were charged with defamation. On 16 May 1994, Fioravanti, Mambro and Picciafuoco were sentenced to life imprisonment; Fachini was acquitted. Cavallini, Fioravanti, Giuliani, Mambro and Picciafuoco were convicted of forming an armed gang; Fachini and Rinani were acquitted. Belmonte, Gelli, Musumeci and Pazienza were convicted of defamation.  On 23 November 1995: The Supreme Court upheld Fioravanti, Mambro, Gelli, Pazienza, Musumeci and Belmonte's convictions, ordering a new trial for Picciafuoco (who was acquitted by the Appeals Court in Florence on 18 June 1996, a verdict upheld by the Supreme Court on 15 April 1997). In April 1998, Mambro was given home confinement and allowed to leave prison during the day.  In June 2000, Massimo Carminati (NAR member), Ivano Bongiovanni (far-right sympathizer) and Federigo Manucci Benincasa (SISMI officer) were convicted of obstruction. Carminati and Manucci Benincasa were acquitted for lack of evidence in December 2001, and Bongiovanni's conviction was upheld. On 30 January 2003, the Court of Cassation finally acquitted Carminati and Manucci Benincasa.

Hypotheses.

As a result of protracted legal procedures and false leads, a number of theories were proposed during the years after the attack. Involvement by Italian Secret Service officials was suggested.  Between 1999 and 2006, during sessions of the parliamentary commission established to probe terrorism in Italy and the failure to identify those responsible for the massacre and a commission investigating the Mitrokhin dossier and Italian intelligence activity, new information emerged on international terrorist networks and Italian intelligence in the former Soviet bloc and Arab countries such as Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Yemen and Iraq. Secret agreements with the Palestinian leadership tied to arms trafficking between the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and Italy and a warning to the Italian anti-terrorist secret service three weeks before the massacre were discovered. Thomas Kram, member of a German terrorist group linked to Carlos the Jackal and the Palestinians, was in Bologna on the day of the massacre. On 17 November 2005, the Bologna prosecutor opened a case (Dossier 7823/2005 RG) against unknown persons. According to media reports in 2004 and 2007, Francesco Cossiga suggested Palestinian involvement in a letter to Enzo Fragalà of the Mitrokhin Commission.  In 2005, Carlos the Jackal said that "the Mitrokhin Commission attempts to falsify history" and "they were the CIA and the Mossad to hit in Bologna" with the intent to punish Italy for its relationship with the PLO. After the 2006 arrest of former Argentine Triple A member Rodolfo Almirón, Spanish lawyer José Angel Pérez Nievas declared that it was "probable that Almirón participated—along with Stefano Delle Chiaie and Augusto Cauchi—in the 1980 bombing in Bologna's train station". In 1998, the Supreme Court of Argentina refused to extradite Cauchi to Italy. In May 2007, Massimo Sparti's son said: "My father has always lied about the Bologna investigation".  During a 2008 BBC interview, former Italian president Francesco Cossiga reaffirmed his belief that the massacre was attributable to Palestinian resistance groups operating in Italy (rather than fascist ) and in the innocence of Francesca Mambro and Valerio Fioravanti. The PFLP has always denied responsibility. On 19 August 2011, the Bologna prosecutor began an investigation of two German terrorists: Thomas Kram and Christa Margot Fröhlich, both linked to Carlos the Jackal's group and in Bologna on the day of the attack.

Legacy.

Relatives of the victims formed the "Associazione dei familiari delle vittime della strage alla stazione di Bologna del 2 agosto 1980" on 1 June 1981 to raise and maintain awareness of the bombing. The group, which began with 44 members, grew to 300. On 6 April 1983, the association and victims' associations of victims of the Piazza Fontana, Piazza della Loggia and Italicus Express bombings formed the Union of Relatives of Victims to Massacres (Unione dei Familiari delle Vittime per Stragi) in Milan.  Bologna and the "Associazione tra i familiari delle vittime della strage alla stazione di Bologna del 2 agosto 1980" sponsor an annual international composition competition which ends with a concert in Piazza Maggiore on 2 August, a national memorial day for all terrorist massacres. Although the damaged part of the station has been mostly reconstructed, the original floor tile pierced by the detonation has been left in place and a deep crack (covered by a glass panel) has been left in the reconstructed main wall. The station clock was stopped at 10:25, the time of the explosion, in 1996.

In popular culture.

The bombing is the backdrop of a chapter of Laurent Binet's "". The 2017 French novel, which satirizes late-20th-century Parisian intellectual and political life, involves two detectives investigating what they assume to be the murder of the philosopher Roland Barthes. The detectives, who travel to Bologna to interview Umberto Eco, narrowly escape injury in the attack.

The Bologna massacre () was a terrorist bombing of the Bologna Centrale railway station in Bologna, Italy, on the morning of 2 August 1980, which killed 85 people and wounded over 200. Several members of the neo-fascist terrorist organization (NAR, Armed Revolutionary Nuclei) were sentenced for the bombing, although the group denied involvement.

Atentát v Bologni, přezdívaný též jako Bolognský masakr (italsky: "strage di Bologna"), byl velký bombový útok na hlavní železniční stanici v italské Bologni z 2. srpna 1980, při kterém zahynulo 85 lidí a více než 200 jich bylo zraněno. Dodnes jde o největší teroristický útok v Itálii spáchaný po 2. světové válce a jeden z největších útoků v západní Evropě.


Early life.

Esteban Eduardo Tuero was born at a time when the likes of Nelson Piquet and Alain Prost were just beginning their careers. The Argentine Grand Prix was based near to his home, at the Oscar Gálvez race circuit. This meant that Formula One was popular where he grew up and, though the Grand Prix was discontinued in 1982, the sport was one of the biggest in the country.  Tuero was born to a family who had a huge interest in motor racing, his father being a minor race car driver, and so Esteban was groomed for the big time from an early age by beginning karts at the age of seven. He would drive karts until 1992, moving up to the Formula series the following year.

Minor formulae career.

Tuero moved up to car racing in 1993, spending a season with the Crespi team in Formula Renault. In 1994, he switched to Formula Honda with the Kissling team, becoming champion. All of his career so far had been in his native Argentina, so despite the pressures of racing in a Formula series whilst only 14, he was given his first taste of traveling the continent with a few races in South American Formula Three, driving a Ralt/Opel with the INI team.  In 1995, he moved to Europe, his father knowing his career would need to go there in order to gain momentum. He won the Italian Formula 2000 National Trophy by a large margin in a Dallara 392, and was also given a taste of Italian Formula Three in a Dallara 395. In 1996, he joined the bigger Italian F3 team Coloni Motorsport, driving a Dallara 396 with an Alfa Romeo engine. His performances in the series started generating interest from Formula One teams, with Benetton in the frame for signing him. It would be Minardi, though, who secured his services as a test driver for the team, despite being just 18 years old.

Route to Formula One.

In the 1996 Formula Three season, Tuero finished fourth in his first race, and he crossed the line first in his second race, only to be disqualified due to using illegal fuel. In the non-championship Monaco event, he started on the front row alongside future F1 driver Jarno Trulli, battling with him before eventually punting him at the hairpin on Lap 17. Tuero retired due to a flat battery later in the race.  Tuero opted to not finish the season in Formula Three, though, and jumped ship to Formula 3000 halfway through. His finishes in Italian F3 left him 13th in the final championship standings. His run for Draco resulted in only one top ten and a final championship position of 16th. His poor performance for Draco meant he was dropped for 1997, but instead of dropping back to Formula 3, he went to the Formula Nippon series in Japan. He only scored one point and finished 16th in the standings (ending up 81 points down on championship winner Pedro de la Rosa), but Tuero covered the required mileage making him eligible for an F1 Super License. His continuing test role with Minardi impressed the team to the extent that the Italian outfit gave him a race seat for the 1998 season, alongside the Japanese driver Shinji Nakano.  Initially there were doubts over whether Tuero would be allowed to compete in the 1998 season. Although Minardi had contracted him to drive an M198, alongside Japan's Shinji Nakano, he failed to meet all Super License requirements. Formula One pundit, and former driver, Martin Brundle was quoted as saying, ""As for Tuero, it would have been scary. I don't like to see these guys out there with so little experience. Imagine it: even if he didn't qualify, he'd be getting in the way during qualifying. And if he did qualify, then he'd definitely be lapped plenty. He'd have really needed to have his wits about him. To be honest, it annoys me, people like that, with zilch credibility.""

Formula One career.

Tuero was eventually awarded his license by the FIA and upon starting the season at 19 years of age, he became the third-youngest ever Formula One driver at the time. He qualified 17th in Australia, ahead of teammate Nakano and the likes of 1996 Monaco Grand Prix winner Olivier Panis but retired with a blown engine. Gearbox gremlins in Brazil followed by a poor pitstop and spin into the gravel at his home race in Argentina left Tuero with three DNF's after the opening three races.  The San Marino Grand Prix was a race of attrition, but Tuero nursed his Minardi home to 8th for his first finish of the year before coming home 15th in Spain, where he was forced to serve a stop-and-go penalty for speeding in the pit lane. For five races in a row, Tuero then failed to finish; Monaco, where he spun off before a lap was completed, Canada, France, Great Britain, where he was one of many to spin off in awful conditions, and Austria, where he spun off for the second race running.  16th in Germany halted the run of retirements, but only briefly. Tuero lasted 13 laps in Hungary, and, though fortunate to miss the huge shunt at the start of the Belgian Grand Prix, still retired prior to half-distance. 11th in Italy preceded another retirement at the Luxembourg Grand Prix.  His final race of the season, the Japanese Grand Prix, would also be his final race in a top-level single-seater series. Starting 21st on the grid, he crashed into Toranosuke Takagi on lap 29, after accidentally hitting the throttle rather than the brakes. His Minardi vaulted Takagi's Tyrrell and upon landing he damaged a number of vertebrae in his neck. In the immediate aftermath of the incident, Ferrari's Michael Schumacher who was challenging McLaren's Mika Häkkinen for the Drivers' Championship, passed the accident spot where carbon fibre debris were littering the race track. Schumacher then suffered a catastrophic rear tyre failure forcing him to retire and thus handing Häkkinen his first World Drivers' Championship. Meanwhile, Tuero's sole Formula One season proved fruitless with no points and no ranking in the Drivers' Championship.  The restructured Minardi squad headed toward the 1999 season with plans to run Tuero once more, this time alongside Spaniard Marc Gene. Tuero was due to test the new car, the M01, in late January after recuperating from his injuries, but on the eve of that first test astounded everyone by announcing his retirement from Formula One. Despite surprising many at the time, Tuero never explained why he quit at the age of just 20 and still hasn't done so to this day. His Formula One career reached its destination after only 16 races.

After Formula One.

Though Minardi had counted on Tuero staying with the team for the 1999 season, to the surprise of the team he walked into a meeting and said he would leave Formula 1 and move back to his home country. In 1999, he joined the Argentinian TC2000 touring car racing series, where he struggled to make an impact by finishing outside the top ten overall. He later won two races at the wheel of a Volkswagen Polo which was one of the three official Volkswagen cars on the grid. After that, Volkswagen discontinued his official link with the team while they were developing new cars for the series. The new car, a Volkswagen Bora, was far from reliable. In fact, Tuero was leading some races with a nice gap and then he had to retire due to mechanical failures.  He was linked with a pay-drivers seat in the CART series for 2002, but it never happened. Despite that he continued racing at TC2000 with several teams and some successful performances.  In 2008, he participated part-time in the FIA GT Championship in a Ferrari 550-GTS Maranello.  Tuero announced his retirement from racing after the 2016 TC2000 season.

Esteban Eduardo Tuero (born 22 April 1978) is an Argentine racing driver who raced for the Minardi Formula One team in 1998. At 19, he became the then-third-youngest (now eighth youngest) F1 driver in history when he landed his seat alongside Shinji Nakano, but left the championship at the end of the season.

Esteban Tuero (22. dubna 1978, Buenos Aires) je argentinský automobilový závodník, který v roce 1998 jezdil ve Formuli 1 za tým Minardi.


Terminology.

The philosophy of communitarianism originated in the 20th century, but the term "communitarian" was coined in 1841, by John Goodwyn Barmby, a leader of the British Chartist movement, who used it in referring to utopian socialists and other idealists who experimented with communal styles of life. However, it was not until the 1980s that the term "communitarianism" gained currency through association with the work of a small group of political philosophers. Their application of the label "communitarian" was controversial, even among communitarians, because, in the West, the term evokes associations with the ideologies of socialism and collectivism; so, public leaders — and some of the academics who champion this school of thought — usually avoid the term "communitarian", while still advocating and advancing the ideas of communitarianism.  The term is primarily used in two senses:  Czech and Slovak philosophers like Marek Hrubec, and Luboš Blaha extend communitarianism to social projects tied to the values and significance of community or collectivism, and to various types of socialism and communism (Christian, Utopian, Scientific), for example:

Origins.

While the term communitarian was coined only in the mid-nineteenth century, ideas that are communitarian in nature appear much earlier. They are found in some classical socialist doctrine (e.g. writings about the early commune and about workers' solidarity), and further back in the New Testament. Communitarianism has been traced back to early monasticism.  A number of early sociologists had strongly communitarian elements in their work, such as Ferdinand Tönnies in his comparison of Gemeinschaft (oppressive but nurturing communities) and Gesellschaft (liberating but impersonal societies), and Emile Durkheim's concerns about the integrating role of social values and the relations between the individual and society. Both authors warned of the dangers of anomie (normlessness) and alienation in modern societies composed of atomized individuals who had gained their liberty but lost their social moorings. Modern sociologists saw the rise of a mass society and the decline of communal bonds and respect for traditional values and authority in the United States as of the 1960s. Among those who raised these issues were Robert Nisbet (Twilight of Authority), Robert N. Bellah "Habits of the Heart", and Alan Ehrenhalt (The Lost City: The Forgotten Virtues Of Community In America). In his book Bowling Alone (2000), Robert Putnam documented the decline of "social capital" and stressed the importance of "bridging social capital," in which bonds of connectedness are formed across diverse social groups.  In the twentieth century communitarianism also began to be formulated as a philosophy by Dorothy Day and the Catholic Worker movement. In an early article the "Catholic Worker" clarified the dogma of the Mystical Body of Christ as the basis for the movement's communitarianism. Along similar lines, communitarianism is also related to the personalist philosophy of Emmanuel Mounier.  Responding to criticism that the term 'community' is too vague or cannot be defined, Amitai Etzioni, one of the leaders of the American communitarian movement, pointed out that communities can be defined with reasonable precision as having two characteristics: first, a web of affect-laden relationships among a group of individuals, relationships that often crisscross and reinforce one another (as opposed to one-on-one or chain-like individual relationships); and second, a measure of commitment to a set of shared values, norms, and meanings, and a shared history and identity – in short, a particular culture. Further, author David E. Pearson argued that "[t]o earn the appellation 'community,' it seems to me, groups must be able to exert moral suasion and extract a measure of compliance from their members. That is, communities are necessarily, indeed, by definition, coercive as well as moral, threatening their members with the stick of sanctions if they stray, offering them the carrot of certainty and stability if they don't."  What is specifically meant by "community" in the context of communitarianism can vary greatly between authors and time periods. Historically, communities have been small and localized. However, as the reach of economic and technological forces extended, more-expansive communities became necessary in order to provide effective normative and political guidance to these forces, prompting the rise of national communities in Europe in the 17th century. Since the late 20th century there has been some growing recognition that the scope of even these communities is too limited, as many challenges that people now face, such as the threat of nuclear war and that of global environmental degradation and economic crises, cannot be handled on a national basis. This has led to the quest for more-encompassing communities, such as the European Union. Whether truly supra-national communities can be developed is far from clear.  More modern communities can take many different forms, but are often limited in scope and reach. For example, members of one residential community are often also members of other communities – such as work, ethnic, or religious ones. As a result, modern community members have multiple sources of attachments, and if one threatens to become overwhelming, individuals will often pull back and turn to another community for their attachments. Thus, communitarianism is the reaction of some intellectuals to the problems of Western society, an attempt to find flexible forms of balance between the individual and society, the autonomy of the individual and the interests of the community, between the common good and freedom, rights and duties.

Communitarian philosophy.

In moral and political philosophy, communitarians are best known for their critiques of John Rawls' political liberalism, detailed at length in his book "A Theory of Justice". Communitarians criticize the image Rawls presents of humans as atomistic individuals, and stress that individuals who are well-integrated into communities are better able to reason and act in responsible ways than isolated individuals, but add that if social pressure to conform rises to high levels, it will undermine the individual self. Communitarians uphold the importance of the social realm, and communities in particular, though they differ in the extent to which their conceptions are attentive to liberty and individual rights. Even with these general similarities, communitarians, like members of many other schools of thought, differ considerably from one another. There are several distinct (and at times wildly divergent) schools of communitarian thought.  The following authors have communitarian tendencies in the philosophical sense, but have all taken pains to distance themselves from the political ideology known as communitarianism, which is discussed further below:

Academic communitarianism.

Whereas the classical liberalism of the Enlightenment can be viewed as a reaction to centuries of authoritarianism, oppressive government, overbearing communities, and rigid dogma, modern communitarianism can be considered a reaction to excessive individualism, understood as an undue emphasis on individual rights, leading people to become selfish or egocentric.  The close relation between the individual and the community was discussed on a theoretical level by Michael Sandel and Charles Taylor, among other academic communitarians, in their criticisms of philosophical liberalism, especially the work of the American liberal theorist John Rawls and that of the German Enlightenment philosopher Immanuel Kant. They argued that contemporary liberalism failed to account for the complex set of social relations that all individuals in the modern world are a part of. Liberalism is rooted in an untenable ontology that posits the existence of generic individuals and fails to account for social embeddedness. To the contrary, they argued, there are no generic individuals but rather only Germans or Russians, Berliners or Muscovites, or members of some other particularistic community. Because individual identity is partly constructed by culture and social relations, there is no coherent way of formulating individual rights or interests in abstraction from social contexts. Thus, according to these communitarians, there is no point in attempting to found a theory of justice on principles decided behind Rawls' veil of ignorance, because individuals cannot exist in such an abstracted state, even in principle.  Academic communitarians also contend that the nature of the political community is misunderstood by liberalism. Where liberal philosophers described the polity as a neutral framework of rules within which a multiplicity of commitments to moral values can coexist, academic communitarians argue that such a thin conception of political community was both empirically misleading and normatively dangerous. Good societies, these authors believe, rest on much more than neutral rules and procedures—they rely on a shared moral culture. Some academic communitarians argued even more strongly on behalf of such particularistic values, suggesting that these were the only kind of values which matter and that it is a philosophical error to posit any truly universal moral values.  In addition to Charles Taylor and Michael Sandel, other thinkers sometimes associated with academic communitarianism include Michael Walzer, Alasdair MacIntyre, Seyla Benhabib, and Shlomo Avineri.

Social capital.

Beginning in the late 20th century, many authors began to observe a deterioration in the social networks of the United States. In the book "Bowling Alone", Robert Putnam observed that nearly every form of civic organization has undergone drops in membership exemplified by the fact that, while more people are bowling than in the 1950s, there are fewer bowling leagues.  This results in a decline in "social capital", described by Putnam as "the collective value of all'social networks' and the inclinations that arise from these networks to do things for each other". According to Putnam and his followers, social capital is a key component to building and maintaining democracy.  Communitarians seek to bolster social capital and the institutions of civil society. The Responsive Communitarian Platform described it thus:  Many social goals require partnership between public and private groups. Though government should not seek to replace local communities, it may need to empower them by strategies of support, including revenue-sharing and technical assistance. There is a great need for study and experimentation with creative use of the structures of civil society, and public-private cooperation, especially where the delivery of health, educational and social services are concerned.

Positive rights.

Important to some supporters of communitarian philosophy is the concept of positive rights, which are rights or guarantees to certain things. These may include state-subsidized education, state-subsidized housing, a safe and clean environment, universal health care, and even the right to a job with the concomitant obligation of the government or individuals to provide one. To this end, communitarians generally support social security programs, public works programs, and laws limiting such things as pollution.  A common objection is that by providing such rights, communitarians violate the negative rights of the citizens; rights to "not" have something done for you. For example, taxation to pay for such programs as described above dispossesses individuals of property. Proponents of positive rights, by attributing the protection of negative rights to the society rather than the government, respond that individuals would not have any rights in the absence of societies—a central tenet of communitarianism—and thus have a social responsibility to give something back to it. Some have viewed this as a negation of natural rights. However, what is or is not a "natural right" is a source of contention in modern politics, as well as historically; for example, whether or not universal health care, private property or protection from polluters can be considered a birthright.  Alternatively, some agree that negative rights may be violated by a government action, but argue that it is justifiable if the positive rights protected outweigh the negative rights lost. In the same vein, supporters of positive rights further argue that negative rights are irrelevant in their absence. Moreover, some communitarians "experience this less as a case of being used for others' ends and more as a way of contributing to the purposes of a community I regard as my own".  Still other communitarians question the very idea of natural rights and their place in a properly functioning community. They claim that instead, claims of rights and entitlements creates a society unable to form cultural institutions and grounded social norms based on shared values. Rather, the liberalist claim to individual rights leads to a morality centered on individual emotivism, as ethical issues can no longer be solved by working through common understandings of the good. The worry here is that not only is society individualized, but so are moral claims.

Responsive communitarianism movement.

In the early 1990s, in response to the perceived breakdown in the moral fabric of society engendered by excessive individualism, Amitai Etzioni and William A. Galston began to organize working meetings to think through communitarian approaches to key societal issues. This ultimately took the communitarian philosophy from a small academic group, introduced it into public life, and recast its philosophical content.  Deeming themselves "responsive communitarians" in order to distinguish the movement from authoritarian communitarians, Etzioni and Galston, along with a varied group of academics (including Mary Ann Glendon, Thomas A. Spragens, James Fishkin, Benjamin Barber, Hans Joas, Philip Selznick, and Robert N. Bellah, among others) drafted and published The Responsive Communitarian Platform based on their shared political principles, and the ideas in it were eventually elaborated in academic and popular books and periodicals, gaining thereby a measure of political currency in the West. Etzioni later formed the Communitarian Network to study and promote communitarian approaches to social issues and began publishing a quarterly journal, "The Responsive Community".  The main thesis of responsive communitarianism is that people face two major sources of normativity: that of the common good and that of autonomy and rights, neither of which in principle should take precedence over the other. This can be contrasted with other political and social philosophies which derive their core assumptions from one overarching principle (such as liberty/autonomy for libertarianism). It further posits that a good society is based on a carefully crafted balance between liberty and social order, between individual rights and personal responsibility, and between pluralistic and socially established values.  Responsive communitarianism stresses the importance of society and its institutions above and beyond that of the state and the market, which are often the focus of other political philosophies. It also emphasizes the key role played by socialization, moral culture, and informal social controls rather than state coercion or market pressures. It provides an alternative to liberal individualism and a major counterpoint to authoritarian communitarianism by stressing that strong rights presume strong responsibilities and that one should not be neglected in the name of the other.  Following standing sociological positions, communitarians assume that the moral character of individuals tends to degrade over time unless that character is continually and communally reinforced. They contend that a major function of the community, as a building block of moral infrastructure, is to reinforce the character of its members through the community's "moral voice," defined as the informal sanction of others, built into a web of informal affect-laden relationships, which communities provide.

Influence.

Responsive communitarians have been playing a considerable public role, presenting themselves as the founders of a different kind of environmental movement, one dedicated to shoring up society (as opposed to the state) rather than nature. Like environmentalism, communitarianism appeals to audiences across the political spectrum, although it has found greater acceptance with some groups than others.  Although communitarianism is a small philosophical school, it has had considerable influence on public dialogues and politics. There are strong similarities between communitarian thinking and the Third Way, the political thinking of centrist Democrats in the United States, and the Neue Mitte in Germany. Communitarianism played a key role in Tony Blair's remaking of the British socialist Labour Party into "New Labour" and a smaller role in President Bill Clinton's campaigns. Other politicians have echoed key communitarian themes, such as Hillary Clinton, who has long held that to raise a child takes not just parents, family, friends and neighbors, but a whole village.  It has also been suggested that the compassionate conservatism espoused by President Bush during his 2000 presidential campaign was a form of conservative communitarian thinking, although he did not implement it in his policy program. Cited policies have included economic and rhetorical support for education, volunteerism, and community programs, as well as a social emphasis on promoting families, character education, traditional values, and faith-based projects.  President Barack Obama gave voice to communitarian ideas and ideals in his book "The Audacity of Hope", and during the 2008 presidential election campaign he repeatedly called upon Americans to "ground our politics in the notion of a common good," for an "age of responsibility," and for foregoing identity politics in favor of community-wide unity building. However, for many in the West, the term communitarian conjures up authoritarian and collectivist associations, so many public leaders – and even several academics considered champions of this school – avoid the term while embracing and advancing its ideas.  Reflecting the dominance of liberal and conservative politics in the United States, no major party and few elected officials openly advocate communitarianism. Thus there is no consensus on individual policies, but some that most communitarians endorse have been enacted. Nonetheless, there is a small faction of communitarians within the Democratic Party; prominent communitarians include Bob Casey Jr., Joe Donnelly, and Claire McCaskill. Many communitarian Democrats are part of the Blue Dog Coalition. A small communitarian faction within the Republican Party also exists. Rick Santorum is an example of a communitarian Republican. It is quite possible that the United States' right-libertarian ideological underpinnings have suppressed major communitarian factions from emerging.  Dana Milbank, writing in the "Washington Post", remarked of modern communitarians, "There is still no such thing as a card-carrying communitarian, and therefore no consensus on policies. Some, such as John DiIulio and outside Bush adviser Marvin Olasky, favor religious solutions for communities, while others, like Etzioni and Galston, prefer secular approaches."  In August 2011, the right-libertarian "Reason Magazine" worked with the Rupe organization to survey 1,200 Americans by telephone. The Reason-Rupe poll found that "Americans cannot easily be bundled into either the 'liberal' or 'conservative' groups". Specifically, 28% expressed conservative views, 24% expressed libertarian views, 20% expressed communitarian views, and 28% expressed liberal views. The margin of error was ±3.  A similar Gallup survey in 2011 included possible centrist/moderate responses. That poll reported that 17% expressed conservative views, 22% expressed libertarian views, 20% expressed communitarian views, 17% expressed centrist views, and 24% expressed liberal views. The organization used the terminology "the bigger the better" to describe communitarianism.  The Pakistan Tehreek-e-Insaf party, founded and led by Imran Khan, is considered the first political party in the world which has declared communitarianism as one of their official ideologies.

Comparison to other political philosophies.

Early communitarians were charged with being, in effect, social conservatives. However, many contemporary communitarians, especially those who define themselves as responsive communitarians, fully realize and often stress that they do not seek to return to traditional communities, with their authoritarian power structure, rigid stratification, and discriminatory practices against minorities and women. Responsive communitarians seek to build communities based on open participation, dialogue, and truly shared values. Linda McClain, a critic of communitarians, recognizes this feature of the responsive communitarians, writing that some communitarians do "recognize the need for careful evaluation of what is good and bad about [any specific] tradition and the possibility of severing certain features... from others." And R. Bruce Douglass writes, "Unlike conservatives, communitarians are aware that the days when the issues we face as a society could be settled on the basis of the beliefs of a privileged segment of the population have long since passed."  One major way the communitarian position differs from the social conservative one is that although communitarianism's ideal "good society" reaches into the private realm, it seeks to cultivate only a limited set of core virtues through an organically developed set of values rather than having an expansive or holistically normative agenda given by the state. For example, American society favors being religious over being atheist, but is rather neutral with regard to which particular religion a person should follow. There are no state-prescribed dress codes, "correct" number of children to have, or places one is expected to live, etc. In short, a key defining characteristic of the ideal communitarian society is that in contrast to a liberal state, it creates shared formulations of the good, but the scope of this good is much smaller than that advanced by authoritarian societies."  Authoritarian governments often embrace extremist ideologies and rule with brute force, accompanied with severe restrictions on personal freedom, political and civil rights. Authoritarian governments are overt about the role of the government as director and commander. Civil society and democracy are not generally characteristic of authoritarian regimes.

Criticism.

Liberal theorists such as Simon Caney disagree that philosophical communitarianism has any interesting criticisms to make of liberalism. They reject the communitarian charges that liberalism neglects the value of community, and holds an "atomized" or asocial view of the self.  According to Peter Sutch the principal criticisms of communitarianism are:  However, he goes on to show that such arguments cannot be leveled against the particular communitarian theories of Michael Walzer and Mervyn Frost.  Other critics emphasize close relation of communitarianism to neoliberalism and new policies of dismantling the welfare state institutions through development of the third sector.

Communitarianism is a philosophy that emphasizes the connection between the individual and the community. Its overriding philosophy is based upon the belief that a person's social identity and personality are largely molded by community relationships, with a smaller degree of development being placed on individualism. Although the community might be a family, communitarianism usually is understood, in the wider, philosophical sense, as a collection of interactions, among a community of people in a given place (geographical location), or among a community who share an interest or who share a history. Communitarianism usually opposes extreme individualism and disagrees with extreme "laissez-faire" policies that neglect the stability of the overall community.

Komunitarismus (z angl. "communitarianism", od lat. "communitas", společenství) má v současné sociologii a filozofii dvojí, do jisté míry odlišný význam. Jde o směr politické filosofie, který proti individualismu zdůrazňuje společnost a společenství, společné hodnoty a obecný prospěch. Individuální práva je třeba udržovat v rovnováze se zájmy národní, případně nadnárodní společnosti.