Eurocommunism and the Spanish Communists
This article attempts to place the PCE in the generally‐held views of Eurocommunism and explore the current orientation of the party. Focusing on the ideology and the political practice of the PCE, the thesis is that the PCE is a ‘Eurocommunist’ party in the mould of the French and Italian parties but with obvious differences arising from nearly forty years of underground existence under Franco. The perspectives attached to Eurocommunism in many ways do not represent a sharp departure from the past history of the PCE. The major strength of the PCE today is not in the electoral arena where it receives only about 10 per cent of the vote, but rather in the trade union movement where it enjoys a hegemonic position in the largest trade union federation, the Workers’ Commissions (CCOO).
The Spanish peace movement in a European context
The sharp decline of the Spanish peace movement in the latter part of the 1980s paralleled quite closely the decline of similar movements elsewhere in Western Europe, particularly the United Kingdom and Germany. There has been considerable research carried out into the rise of the ‘new social movements’ in Western Europe but little attention has been given to southern Europe, particularly Spain. Also, most of the literature has focused on the period of ascendancy for these movements rather than the era of their decline in the later 1980s. This article seeks to fill that gap by focusing on the decline of the Spanish peace movement within the wider context of the European ‘new social movements’. It explores the common factors in the European‐wide decline while highlighting certain factors that were unique to Spain.
The Internet and the Changing Beijing-Taipei Relations: Toward Unification or Fragmentation?
Information and its technologies facilitate the exercise of what has been called “soft power,” a concept that differentiates information from the conventional dimensions of “hard power,” which is mainly associated with military force and economic influence. Soft power, according to Nye, a former Assistant Secretary of Defense of the United States, means that “A country may obtain the outcomes it wants in world politics because other countries want to follow it, admiring its values, emulating its example, aspiring to its level of prosperity and openness. In this sense it is just as important to set the agenda in world politics and attract others as it is to force them to change through the threat or use of military or economic weapons.”1