Preliminary Programme

Democracy and secrecy do not make a happy match: secret government activities cannot be fully controlled by citizens through public scrutiny, and governments cannot fully account for their secret activities. Security and intelligence services of democratic governments operate in secrecy. Consequently, parliamentary control on secret services is inherently problematic.

This paper is concerned with the recurring tensions between parliament and intelligence. It focuses on political argumentation on secret services in French and Dutch parliaments between 1975 and 1995. This study evaluates how argumentation changed over time, from the Cold War to the ‘decade of openness’, which was characterized by the rise of the concept of transparency. And it assesses how argumentation differed between the French and Dutch political contexts, which were influenced by a variety of threats to national security.
In order to analyse the tensions between parliament and intelligence and the circumstances under which the relationship between them could improve I innovatively adapt Albert Hirschman’s categories of exit, voice, loyalty and neglect, and Max Weber’s ideal types of the ethics of conviction and responsibility to historical research on political argumentation. Members of parliament, through their arguments, may reject the service’s existence as a matter of principle (exit), they may either express criticism (voice) or show support (loyalty), or they may tend to dismiss the matter of intelligence altogether, discouraged by the secrecy that surrounds it (neglect). These four types of arguments may either be constructive or destructive judging from the amount of parliamentary control on intelligence they lead to.

The nature of parliamentary argumentation on intelligence bears apparent significance for, first, the quality of the relationship between parliament and intelligence and, second, the quality of parliamentary control on secret services. If parliament succeeds in monitoring and controlling the conduct of secret services, it prevents services from shirking their responsibility and it avoids the development of concentrations of power in their hands. Holding secret services to account will lead to subjecting them to certain procedures and rules of conduct – which in the long run legitimizes their existence in open democratic societies. (Show less)

The purpose of this paper is to address political history through the analysis of political ideas and attitudes. It aims to rethink conservatism at the turn of the 19th and 20th century, when the processes of industrialization, urbanization and democratization presented a challenge to established institutions, as well as to political and social elites of Western societies. These evolutions led to the growing development of state’s role, especially in economic sphere. Questioning the notion of conservatism helps us to understand the deep transformation of this movement which defined itself in relation to the rise of the modern state and more broadly with democracy.

Focusing on the cases of conservatism in France and the United States allows for an examination of this notion in political environments where few political figures claimed to be conservative and where conservatism had a rather negative connotation. But different conservative trends and discourses existed on the French and American political stages. This paper aims to highlight the different shades of conservatism in order to build a typology of this political movement at the beginning of the 20th century.

The railroads case study illustrates the changes occurring inside conservatism in its attitude towards the modern state. As one of the major economic sectors at the beginning of 20th century, the development of railroads represented these processes of industrialization, urbanization and democratization, notably by contributing to the expansion of the working class. Two major debates took place in both the United States and France during that period. In the United States, the railroad rate bill of 1906, which would become eventually the Hepburn Act, was one of the major tools of economic regulation developed by the federal state during the Progressive Era. In France, the state purchase of the Compagnie des Chemins de Fer de l’Ouest in 1908 was the first step towards the nationalization of the French railroad system, completed in the 1930s. Each of these debates highlighted increasing state intervention in economic regulation at a national level, and were the source of a strong political resistance linked to the deep changes in conservative ideas and organizations of the early 20th century.

The use of parliamentary and congressional debates, as well as political and intellectual reviews and newspapers allows for an exploration of the stance of main conservative figures, especially through discourse analysis. It will emphasize the articulation between conservatism, resistance and modernity. Moreover, the study of petitions sent to the French Parliament and the American Congress will allow for a comparison with other figures and institutions involved in resistance to the modern state, such as economic actors or normal citizens. Through these different sources, this paper seeks to document a coherent conservative stance across the Atlantic against the rise of the modern state. (Show less)

Iberisms and pan-Hispanism: a historical reflection from the viewpoint of conceptual and cultural history. The aim of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the iberisms and its pan-hispanist metamorphoses in a transnational and transcultural context, from the mid-nineteenth century to the 2nd Spanish Republic (1931). In an era of globalization and great transnational empires, how did iberisms and pan-hispanism tried to resist to anglo-saxon and german empires? Iberism was a vague and mutant aspiration in both Iberian nations. In Portugal there was a widespread fear of an Iberian unity. In Spain, iberism was at times associated with an imperial or federal aim. Pan-Hispanists tried to strengthen relationships with the Hispanic-American nations in order to create a cultural and spiritual alternative space. I’ll consider these concepts in the context of European nationalisms and their horizons of expectation in public opinion. On one hand I’ll see Portugal-Spain relationships taking into account the topics of nationalisms and frontiers. On the other hand, from the end of 19th century I’ll have to ask how did these topics were related to globalization, within the broader geographies of Hispanic-America, Europe and the United States. Finally North-South relations within Europe and the world should not be forgotten in this approach. (Show less)