Cannons and Rubber boats: Oriana Fallaci and the 'Clash of Civilizations'

Written in October 2001 as a 'gut reaction' to the attack on the Twin Towers, and published first as a long article in the daily Corriere della Sera and then in book form (in its original shape, twice as long as the article) in December 2001, Oriana Fallaci's pamphlet La rabbia e l'orgoglio ('Anger and pride') was in its twenty-sixth edition when I bought it in September 2004. Its follow-up, La forza della ragione ('The force of reason'), has already sold 800,000 copies since its publication in 2004. Oriana Fallaci has emerged after 9/11 as the strongest and most vocal Italian representative of the 'clash of civilizations' theory. This essay analyses the constitutive elements of her discourse (Italian nationalism, values instead of history and politics, and violent speech conflating Islam, terrorism and immigrants) and tries to understand its appeal and the sources of its authority in Fallaci's career, in order to outline the specific Italian version of the clash of civilizations theory

Implementing the Leader Development That Counts

Effective leader development is too often the first casualty of high demands placed on leaders, from corporate America to the U.S. military. A comparison of these entities’ common leader development programs and workforce feedback reveals insufficient strategies and competing priorities. Organizations succumbing to these obstacles unknowingly find themselves trapped in adverse cycles of leadership development, perpetuating undernourished talent and mediocre performance. This problem will not fix itself. Organizations must refocus efforts to understand and implement a leader driven, interpersonally focused, and culturally ingrained brand of leader development to maximize available talent in crafting their envisioned organization

Tax-benefits reforms and the labor market: evidence from Belgium and other EU countries

During the last decade, several EU countries have tried to tackle unemployment and low activity rates through extensive tax cuts. In an effort to encourage the taking up of work – especially amongst the less productive workers – policymakers have shown increasing interest in targeted tax and social security contribution rebates as well as in benefits conditional on being in employment. This paper surveys recent tax-benefit reforms in Germany, the Netherlands, Italy, the UK, France and Belgium, focussing in particular on the reforms carried out in the latter. The potential labor supply effect of the Belgian reforms are assessed via a discrete hours labor supply model. The results are then compared to similar evaluations of reforms implemented in the aforementioned countries. Results suggest than: (i) generalized tax cut are not always effective in stimulating labor supply; (ii) in several central continental Europe, social security contributions play a major role in determining the incentives to take up work; (iii) joint assessment of income for both purposes of taxation and benefit eligibility has unambiguous negative effects on the labor supply of secondary earners (i.e. mostly women); (iv) targeted reductions in taxes and social security contributions, as well as benefits conditioned on employment are effective means to promote employment, but (v) efficient design of these policies is of greatest importance in order to counter potential negative incentive effects on the population already in employment.Tax-benefit Systems – Microsimulation – Household Labour Supply – Multinomial Logit.