Various Scottish Enlightenment thinkers raised substantial challenges to the British imperial policy over the course of the eighteenth century. They were largely concerned about the global competit...

This essay examines the two means by which Machiavelli thought republics could address the political problem of predatory socio-economic elites: Healthy republics, he proposes explicitly, should consistently check the “insolence of the nobles” by establishing constitutional offices like the Roman tribunes of the plebeians; corrupt republics, he suggests more subtly, should completely eliminate overweening oligarchs via the violent actions of a tyrannical individual. Roman-styled tribunes, wielding veto, legislative and accusatory authority, contain the oppressive behavior of socio-economic elites during normal republican (...) circumstances. By contrast, having overthrown a republic grown corrupt through oligarchic encroachment on the commonweal, Machiavelli suggests that Greek-styled tyrants lay the foundation for a more robust—that is, more egalitarian and martial—republic down the road by eliminating elites entirely and by instituting economic redistribution and military reforms. (shrink)

Behind the Limes: On the Quest for an Eastern Dimension of European Identity Although the integration processes in Western Europe have been studied for decades, the idea of European identity as a specific area of scholarship is relatively new. This interest coincides with fundamental changes that have occurred in Europe since 1989 and that may impact the internal coherence of the enlarged European Union. Over the past decades, the East-West dichotomy has been magnified due to the impact of Communism in (...) the East, which exacerbated an already existent sense in the West of Eastern Europe's primordial otherness. Since four decades of Communism in East Central and Southern Europe produced only two, or at most, three generations that were raised and lived under a totalitarian regime, a long-term historical perspective is essential for a better understanding of the mutual estrangement. The paper examines the origins and key moments in the alienation of Eastern and Western Europe as reflected in ancient, medieval and modern history. It focuses on the present stage of perception of East Central Europe in the West. In the final part, it identifies societal values that may re-generate socio-cultural cohesiveness aimed at filling the gap between the two parts of Europe. (shrink)