Between logics of deliberation and appropriateness: the discourse and practices of the Catholic Church over the Basque issue

This article addresses the way the Catholic Church deliberates and/or contributes to public deliberation over the Basque ethno-territorial conflict. The article proceeds in three sections. Section 2 positions the piece within theoretical debate about Rissian and institutionalist approaches to the deliberative ideas and practices conveyed by the Church. Section 3 sums up the main results of the empirical research undertaken, making a distinction between the contribution of the Church to public debate over conflict-resolution and the way it has deliberated over the ethno-territorial issue within its own institutional apparatus. We observe the primacy of logics of appropriateness on the part of the Church, thus reducing deliberative practices to an active but marginalized status. The concluding section discusses the empirical and theoretical implications of the case study

Sectoral Issues and Environmental Causes: The Mobilization of the French Basque Fishermen after the Sinking of the Prestige

This article analyses the mobilization of French Basque fishermen following the sinking of the oil tanker Prestige off the coast of Galicia (Spain) in 2002. This environmental disaster led to intense political action and bottom-up mobilization in the French Basque region, especially within a profession already undergoing structural changes since the 1990s, partly because of the implementation of the EU Common Fisheries Policy. The Basque fishermen's reactions clearly illustrate the specific stakes and power game at play within the trade. The Prestige disaster occurred at a time of deep changes, if not destabilization, of the sectoral modes of regulation, thus straining relationships between Europe, nations and infra-national bodies. It led to a reorganization of the local institutional order. The management of the crisis also shed light on the paradoxical dimension of a fishing community caught in between solidarity and competitive localism, sectoral interests and environmental issues, unity of the milieu and internal fragmentation. It reopened debate over EU regulations in so far as two competing perceptions of Europeanization were revealed by this crisis — general awareness among professionals of the European dimension in environmental issues vs specific awareness of the EU's extensive regulatory framework for the fishing industry

Private Health Insurance in Belgium: Marketization Crowded Out?

International audienceIn Belgium, the “public” side of health coverage is delegated and organized around non-profit private health insurers, namely mutual benefit societies, and as such, it is excluded from the perimeter of EU insurance law and regulation. Over the last two decades, and as a result of various governmental attempts to reduce health expenditure, mutual benefit societies nevertheless developed and managed on their own a variety of complementary coverage. This situation was challenged during the 2000s by for-profit insurance companies seeking to penetrate the market. In this context, they used both Insurance and Solvency II directives in their search for supranational support to challenge the position of mutual benefit societies. In turn, the latter responded by working politically to secure their position at the domestic level. As a result of these political struggles, a reform adopted in 2010 reinforced several features of the Belgian public-private mix by safeguarding the position of mutual benefit societies for complementary coverage. But this same reform also opened the supplementary side of health coverage to competition and aligned it with EU provisions, thus marketizing a share of the public-private mix in Belgium—with recent figures suggesting that this new pillar is now expanding

La compétitivité au centre de luttes entre cultures capitalistes

En s'appuyant sur les résultats d'enquêtes récentes conduites dans une optique d'économie politique, cet article argumente tout d'abord que les institutions qui encadrent l'activité économique sont beaucoup plus que des règles formelles et des normes informelles. Ces institutions sont également, et surtout, des conventions sociales qui imposent constamment des paramètres forts sur comment les enjeux socio-économiques sont pensés et sur la manière dont on peut agir sur eux. En effet, c'est parce qu'elles façonnent les attentes des acteurs et des populations concernées qu'il est heuristique, voire essentiel, d'analyser les « cultures » capitalistiques, c'est-à dire les hiérarchies de valeurs qui, dans tel ou tel espace social, impactent lourdement le changement ou la reproduction institutionnelle. Cette thèse centrale est ensuite étayée à travers des exemples empiriques développés d'une part à l'échelle d'une industrie spécifique (l'agro-alimentaire) et, d'autre part, à celle d'une politique économique transversale (la politique de la concurrence européenne)

Introduction: The European Union, the Insurance Industry and the Public-Private Mix in Healthcare

International audienc

Towards an institutionalized language policy for the French Basque country? Actors, processes and outcomes

This paper focuses on the progressive institutionalization of the Basque language policy (also called Euskera) in the French Basque Country (Iparralde) since the Second World War. In view of this, it questions how such a policy programme emerged in such a centralized country as France. According to this study, this policy shift was favoured not only by a combination of endogenous factors (for example, the new French territorial polity, the new institutional capacities reached after decentralization, the new relationship with central state services, the establishment of stable territorial coalitions between civil society and local representatives, the new and more peaceful repertoire of collective actions among activists) but also by exogenous variables (for example, the rise of cross-border relations between French and Spanish Basque actors). In sum, the strong political institutions and social movements of the southern Basque Country partially compensated for the institutional weakness of French Basque actors and contributed, along with endogenous factors, to the institutionalization of a specific language policy for Euskera