A new state in Europe? Scenarios for Catalan self-determination

Historically, the political structure of Spain has been a source of conflict: peripheral regions as Catalonia and the Basque country have questioned the centralized power of the state and have claimed a higher level of decentralization in view of their distinct history, cultural identity and language. Recently, political and social discontent has escalated in Catalonia, leading to the unilateral announcement of a Catalan self-determination referendum for November 2014. Regardless of political or ethical preferences, it will be necessary to foresee the consequences of this process for Catalonia, Spain and elsewhere. A scenario approach focuses on possible outcomes of the current debate rather than on the arguments put forward in the controversy. Those in favour of Catalan independence have depicted a future for their country with a booming economy that will situate it at currently unattainable levels of prosperity. Opponents of secession argue that Catalonia will become a failed state. These future visions of an independent Catalonia can be described as scenarios, the underlying assumptions and plausibility of which can be analysed. EU membership and the effect of borders on international trade are identified as key variables. The alternative scenarios will also be crucial to evaluate the broader impact of “a new state in Europe”.

Article published in Futures, Volume 64, December 2014, Pages 51–60.
doi:10.1016/j.futures.2014.10.008.

Link: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0016328714001694.

Who were the Maidan snipers?

In the propaganda war surrounding the Ukraine conflict it is hard to find any reliable information. However, when sources as little suspect of belonging to Putin's propaganda machine as Estonian minister Urmas Paet or the German ARD television allude to the presence of snipers different than the officially accused Berkut policemen, this becomes alarming. Paet and Catherine Ashton "discussed a conspiracy theory that blamed the killing of civilian protesters in the Ukrainian capital, Kiev, on the opposition rather than the ousted government" earlier this month. On April 10, the German news show Monitor reported that shots had been fired not only by policemen loyal to Yanukovich, who claimed to have fired only at armed protesters, but also from the Ukraine hotel and other locations behind the protesters. From these positions, both policemen and protesters were targeted. Despite the indications for the involvement of an unidentified and professional sniper-unit, State Prosecutor and Svoboda militant Oleg Machnizki has closed the investigation (full transcript, in German, after the break).

Why did we go to war?

One hundred years later, we are still discussing what caused the First World War, and who is to blame. What we should have learned is that while isolated incidents and the reaction to these in itself may have seemed rational and understandable, the sum of these incidents became a catastrophic leap into death and destruction. With this hindsight we could have avoided a similar chain of events one century later.

In the escalation of tensions in Ukraine, we have seen the following critical incidents:

1. Interference in domestic affairs
If Ukraine was a sovereign state, an intervention in its internal affairs could only have been justified in the case of severe violations of human rights. But what was under discussion were the country's international relations. The EU support for protests against an elected president was a casus belli - not for Russia but for Ukraine.

"They call me the plantation negro"

A few years back I was asked to look into traditional Caribbean song texts - the main research question being whether and to what extent these would show a different sexual morality. While analyzing these songs I found it hard to interpret the sometimes shocking racism of popular and apparently uncontroversial songs.

In particular:
"They call me the plantation negro,
for work to me is an enemy.
I leave working to the ox,
for God created work as a punishment".
(A mí me llaman el negrito del batey, / porque el trabajo para mí es un enemigo. / El trabajar yo se lo dejo todo al buey, / porque el trabajo lo hizo Dios como castigo).

The history of these songs led me to the following explanation:

"The censorship guy". Homage to Manuel L. Abellán

Manuel Abellán (Barcelona, 1938-2011) was a professor at the Universiteit van Amsterdam when in the late seventies, early years of the Spanish democracy, he managed to enter into the archives of the Francoist censorship and started his endeavour of reconstructing what had been purged and of identifying those who had been responsible - many of them still respected politicians, writers or scholars who had slipped through the nets of the Transition's imposed amnesia.
The following piece was published in the special issue of the electronic journal Represura, homage to Manuel. My title comes from one of the anecdotes of Manuel's research and his contacts with the former Francoist esteblishment when, after being introduced to former Franco minister Fraga the latter recognised him as "the censorship guy", to which Manuel replied "No, no, the censorship guy... that would be you".
Besides my professor, Manuel was an admired and beloved friend until he passed away in December 2011.

“El de la censura”
Jeroen Oskam

         Empecé a trabajar con Manuel Abellán en los años ochenta, en la Facultad de Letras de Amsterdam. Acababa de salir su primer gran estudio sobre la censura franquista. En Amsterdam daba clases, principalmente, sobre Historia Contemporánea de España, una asignatura cuyo atractivo era una visión coherente que vinculaba sucesos dentro pero también fuera de España con la evolución del pensamiento político y cultural – superestructura, decíamos hace tiempo –, de tal manera que no era raro que una clase sobre la Primera República terminara tratando de la actualidad política holandesa. Para el estudiante que yo era entonces, eran oasis de lucidez en un ambiente donde se confundía romanticismo y palabrería con erudición.

A Big Data Police State?

If you look at the long term future of social media, I do not believe that privacy is the main concern. It is of course not the best place to share those things you would not want to be public. But the larger part of 'posts' will be hardly compromising for its users.
That is, if taken separately. The long term trend in social media appears to be building search algorithms that can make sense of all these posts, and attach a meaning behind them to individual users. As Facebook developer Rasmussen explains in a BBC-interview about the value of newsfeed posts:

"It's by far our biggest data source. The engineering challenge of building a search index that can manage that volume of data is big. We're well underway to making the system scale that far - we just aren't there yet."
It means a friend searching for "Friends who like football" could identify you if you had once written something like "Come on United!" in your feed.
[...]
"There are really interesting techniques around sentiment analysis," Mr Rasmussen says, "where people try to take text and figure out whether it's someone saying they like something or don't like something.
(See: BBC News - Technology, "Lars Rasmussen: the brains behind Facebook's future")

 A few months ago, when we started an ETFI-project on the future of social media, I spoke of a scenario in which both industries and governments would adopt a more repressive attitude. The fact that social media as Twitter have created temporary openings of free speech in totalitarian countries is a matter of technical unpreparedness rather than a feature which is inherent to the new media. On the contrary: indepth indexing of newsfeed posts will be an unprecedentedly powerful tool for repressive organisations.

Trendwatching: my 2013 predictions

Just as others, I failed dramatically in my 2012 predictions. After visiting the Horecava Food Fair, I foresaw that ice cream would become hot, as well as the break through of the culinary bitter ball. This time I will stay on the safe side and just look at the non culinary world:

1. The Syrian civil war will affect the stability of Iran.
2. The U.S. successfully increases its energy production. All else remaining equal, prices will grow moderately. Geostrategical disruptions of energy supply though will lead to a further price hike.
3. Painful sacrifices of purchasing power, in combination with a still deepening recession, lead to rising tensions and social violence in Southern Europe. This will strengthen the traditional left and drive the right to the far right. 
4. Also elsewhere, austerity measures will lead back into recession. Bad times for consensus politics. In the Netherlands, the Conservative-Labour coalition will not make it to the end of the year.
5. The prestige and credibility of monarchies will crumble. In Europe, we may see one disappear. It is a logical result of growing transparency.
6. Coursera will affect universities as Napster has changed the music industry. Eventually we will all be able to learn from eminent scientists. Being in an actual class room will be like being dragged on to the stage to dance with Bruce Springsteen.
7. If electronic warfare has become fully effective, we may also see the digital equivalent of the Great Train Robbery.
8. There will be no Elfstedentocht ice skating tour. Not because of the whether; there would simply be too many people for the (up to now) required 15 cms. of ice.
9. Those who have high expectations of 2013 will be disappointed.
10. Barcelona will win whatever there is to win. At least got that one right.

The disadvantage of peace and harmony (a Christmas thought)

I am color blind, but I did not discover that myself. You only know when other people tell you they see colors that you don't. It is the same as being stupid: you don't understand the things you cannot understand, so others have to tell you.

This principle shows why we have to rely on other opinions to understand the flaws of our system. As far as I am able to see, this is an important ideological problem of our contemporary world. Without alternative perspectives, we will be unable to see what happens, if it is rooted in our system.

The rational allocation of resources dogma

What would be the right price for a house? One of the most visible symptoms of the current crisis is the oversupply in housing. Demand is stable: housing is a basic necessity, and being evicted can drive people to suicide (2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9 and counting). This means that prices would have to drop to the level where buyers step in. They do not.

We do not have a mechanism that rationally measures the value of a house.

The abandonment of democracy

In our history books we have studied how economic crises and abandoning democratic principles go hand in hand. It is fascinating and frightening to see, currently, how this mechanism is being set in motion.

Originally, democracy was the sovereignty of the will of the people. The people are free to decide and join forces to defend the common good by majority vote. But now there appears to be a footnote: the people may be wrong. Mistaken. EU Commissioner De Gucht raises the question in an interview with the Belgian Standaard: Greece remaining in the Euro-zone will only be possible "if the Greek people will be able to judge rationally in their elections. But they are desperate people... " (De Standaard).

If economic austerity is the only rational thing to do, why do we still have to vote? And why do people fail to see what is good for them? Is there an institution which prevails over democracy and which may judge what is rational and what is not?

And what can we do if the people give the wrong answer?

Politics as a profession

We may assume that many people are active in politics because of their convictions. On the other hand, it is not unthinkable that the work of politicians can be seen as a profession with attractive social and financial advantages. If this is the case for some, then it would not be hard to figure out the wisest political career planning: this is, obviously, in mainstream politics, either by obtaining a position in a political party that will hold power for the years to come, or if we have a political alternation by joining the party which is likely to replace the power party. In view of mobility, the latter option is probably even better.

Where will we find most corrupt activity? Political parties do not advocate corruption. Corruption may be linked to an attitude towards political power rather than to political convictions. Criminal activities will obviously be planned in an environment where their probability of success is greatest. This relation is illustrated by this map of political corruption in Spain:

Does corruption have an ideology?

I have been receiving more visits from the US lately, and I am afraid these visitors may have been misled by googling the combination of "public administration" and "corruption" (see Public administrations as corrupt welfare systems). This is of course not what I meant to say: I strongly believe in society offering a series of services all of society is supposed to benefit from, such as education, health care, a prison system, garbage trucks and fire brigades. Recent ideology is that private enterprise will organize these activities more efficiently. Two decades down the line, it is time to evaluate whether this dogma is actually true, and if so, why.

The other big question is: how do we make sure that these services are really managed around the social benefits that justify their existence, and not for other, e.g. personal benefits. The Soviet system was unable to solve this question. So is ours.

Public administrations as corrupt welfare systems

Why is it harder in some countries to cut back on their administrative bodies, normally in multiple layers, than on other public services that, at least at first sight, seem at least as important - say, education or health care? I believe these administrations historically have a different function. While the authoritarian dictatorships of Southern Europe failed to build welfare states, they did create corrupt substitutes through the control, assignment and withdrawal of civil servant positions. Now that Southern European democracies still have very limited social systems, political parties continue to rely on handing out public jobs to their supporters.

This is a corrupt alternative for the northern welfare states, and with no democratic protection against poverty in place, it is hard to see how this vicious circle of clientelism can be broken.

A 10 against fascism

A Bachelor dissertation read at Tilburg University, identifying right-wing PVV as a contemporary fascist party, was awarded the highest grade (10). This unusual qualification made national press and has sparked controversy.

The debate about the underlying hypothesis has become a political one. Unlike others, I do not object to linking PVV to fascism, and I believe it is extremely relevant to study how the far right will evolve in the next decade. I am hesitant though about the academic perfection attributed to the paper and about the publicity that was sought. The grade seems to be a statement. It means no favour to the student, nor to science, nor to a political cause.

It reminds me of a curious judgement I received when I was a student. I wrote a small paper about a movement inside Italian fascism. I analysed its ideological origins, and I could use the findings in later work on the effects of censorship. My supervisor (at the Dept. of Contemporary History) looked puzzled and asked: "But where does it say that you are against fascism?"

I still wonder whether medical students are also required to state that they are against cancer.

Nuns

Conservatives refer to a ‘moral crisis’ when they see how changes in our social order affect human behaviour. This crisis would include phenomena as diverse as abortion or the London riots.

I see different signs of a moral crisis. This is the crisis of generations no longer capable of formulating collective answers to the current appearance of social contradictions; unable to imagine an alternative to the situations they question. Turning to guidelines which do not address contemporary questions – but escapist questions – is a sign of moral desolation. Clueless protests, young women becoming nuns and massive Catholic manifestations are all symptoms of such desolation.

We should be careful when drawing conclusions though. Is the number of nuns really growing, or is it just that we have become more interested in the phenomenon? Is the Catholic movement growing, or has it become more aggressive? We need data, not propaganda.

(Update, April 2012: Here are your data. Researchers at the University of Chicago find that the belief in God is in decline).

BBC News: 'The growing number of young women becoming nuns', October 24, 2011.

Anatomy of a moment

Last summer I received a message from the Dutch translator of Javier Cercas' latest book Anatomía de un momento, on Tejero's failed coup d'état of 1981 (February 23, or 23-F). The book had a reference to my PhD. dissertation, and the translator had questions about the links between the military and civil society; in particular, the "think tank", "discussion club", or however we should call it (this was in fact one of the translator's questions) Club Siglo XXI.

I had not even read the book yet (the usual confusion between urgent and important tasks).In spite of its popularity, it is sometimes hard to find (I had to buy several copies to give it to friends) because bookstores tend to classify this well documented history book as a novel. The reason must be, besides some personal notes, that it is extremely well written. Therefore, it reads like a thriller that perfectly conveys the tension and uncertainty of the moment.

From a historical perspective, documenting this uncertainty may be one of the most important contributions of this study. While it is unknown which political forces backed the military coup, and if these forces involved decided to back out in the evening of the 23d, how and why, no doubt that in a few decades mainstream historiography will claim to know an unquestionable truth, which will also be the most comfortable one: that all democrats were heroic, and that those who were not heroic went to jail.

The coup's failure meant the end of the democratic transition in Spain, which since then is considered to be a mature democratic society. It is, in the sense that there is a peaceful alternation of governing political forces. It is not, though, if we consider the mentality by which this alternation is seen as an usurpation of power claimed by traditional social forces.

Besides those interested in recent Spanish history, this book should be read by history students because of its research approach and style.

In memoriam, José Ángel Ezcurra, director of Triunfo magazine

In 1990 or 1991, when I was preparing my dissertation on Indice, press and censorship under the Franco-regime, I interviewed the former director of Triunfo, maybe the most unequivocal exponent of the opposition to the Franco-regime during its last two decades. José Ángel Ezcurra provided me with a wealth of data, not only memories about the history of his own magazine, but also insights into how censorship functioned and into social life in press circles in the 60s and 70s.

The website http://www.triunfodigital.es/ contains a large collection of Triunfo issues, as well as documents of interest for the history of this magazine. Jose Ángel Ezcurra tells his history of Triunfo in "Triunfo en su época" (269 pages, PDF-document).

José Ángel Ezcurra died on October 1, 2010 in Madrid (Obituary: http://www.elpais.com/articulo/cultura/Jose/Angel/Ezcurra/director/Triunfo/elpepucul/20101001elpepucul_5/Tes).

Research Interests

My research interests in a broad sense are related to understanding the development of social theory in a historical context. In my studies of Spanish history, I have been especially interested in the censorship phenomenon, not only by analyzing censorship criteria and mechanisms, but also its repercussions in the development of political and social theory.

More recently my attention has shifted to Intercultural Communication. I found that the explanation of cultural differences in this new discipline is weak or non-existent (“historically eclectic”, as Hofstede states). I am interested in understanding whether observing and measuring cultural behaviour lead to valid conclusions, and to what extent these observations are determined by cultural perspective.

At the same time, my professional interest in the development of higher education curricula has led me to explore the relation between academic learning and professional performance. I especially seek to understand the development of managerial expertise and to apply these findings in the design of hospitality programs.

Franco's meedogenloze terreur

Book review of Víctimas de la guerra civil by Santos Juliá, in Dutch national newspaper De Volkskrant. Our book on Spanish history is quoted as an "independent" source, even though the number of war victims has to be corrected upward in view of more recent research:

 
RECENSIE, Sander de Vaan
op 30 april '99, 00:00, bijgewerkt 17 januari '09, 23:19

OP 1 APRIL was het zestig jaar geleden dat de Spaanse burgeroorlog werd beeindigd. De herdenkingen vonden grotendeels in beperkte kring plaats, want de meeste Spanjaarden denken nog altijd niet graag terug aan deze gruwelijke broederstrijd.

Tijdens de dictatuur van Franco (1939-1975) was iedere discussie over de oorlog uit den boze. Maar ook na het herstel van dedemocratie bleef het conflict een tere kwestie. Het gros van de bevolking besloot na de dood van de dictator haast instinctief het verleden te 'vergeten'.

Stereotypology and stereotypometry

Since several decades, there has been an increasing interest in studying cultural differences. Initially, these studies focused on ways of approaching people, negotiating and similar practical matters, but since the 1980s the focus has shifted to the underlying patterns of thinking. In his famous Culture’s Consequences (1980), Hofstede set the trend for research into differences in values between different countries. In this paper, I will examine the premises of this type of research and its alleged objectivity. Can these studies really reveal the essential values of cultures around the world, or are they just a scientific cover-up for stereotyping?