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Education, Intelligence and Cultural Diplomacy at the British Council in Madrid, 1940–1941

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The British Council opened its first office in Madrid in 1940. The London Blitz had begun and Britain was alone at war: Paris had fallen to the Nazis three months earlier, while the Soviet Union and the United States would not enter the war until June and December 1941, respectively. The Council’s first branch in Spain included an English language institute, a cultural centre and a school for children—to date, the British Council’s only school in the world.

Social Democratic Party exceptionalism and transnational policy linkages

Read more about Social Democratic Party exceptionalism and transnational policy linkages

Political parties learn from successful foreign parties. But does the scope of this crossnational policy diffusion vary with party family? We use a heuristics framework to argue that party family conditions transnational policy learning when it makes information on the positions of sister parties more readily available and relevant.

International Workshop 'Radical(ised) Ideologies in the 21st Century'

Read more about International Workshop 'Radical(ised) Ideologies in the 21st Century'

The election of Donald Trump in 2016 in the United States and the weight of various intellectuals and activists united under the label 'alt-right' in his campaign and during the beginning of his term of office, the unlikely populist alliance formed in Italy between the Northern League and the 5-Star Movement, or the constitution in France by Marion Maréchal of an institute of social, economic and political sciences: all of these elements show that cultural hegemony appears to be the condition of possibility for political conquest.

The Political Economy of Africa’s new links with Asian International Financial Centres

Read more about The Political Economy of Africa’s new links with Asian International Financial Centres

Jihad in the City: Militant Islam and Contentious Politics in Tripoli

Read more about Jihad in the City: Militant Islam and Contentious Politics in Tripoli

Tawhid was a militant Islamist group which implemented Islamic law at gunpoint in the Lebanese city of Tripoli during the 1980s. In retrospect, some have called it 'the first ISIS-style Emirate'. Drawing on two hundred interviews with Islamist fighters and their mortal enemies, as well as on a trove of new archival material, Raphaël Lefèvre provides a comprehensive account of this Islamist group.