Affective processes fuel and orient social behaviour throughout life; if they did not exist, there would be no striving, no goal-pursuit, no goal-oriented action. Two interconnected brain regions are deeply involved in the socially adaptive functions of affect and emotion. Both the maturation and functioning of the brain mechanisms involved undergo the shaping influence of the manifold experience that is derived from social interactions.

A war of nine years duration led to the loss of the French colonies in Asia, but Indo-China did not have the impact in French eyes that North Africa and, in particular, Algeria had. In comparison, the French were not required to leave Indo-China either immediately or totally. Economic interests were retained until 1975, as was the pursuit of important cultural activities. Departure in 1975 left a memory that was partly nostalgic and partly bitter, but it revealed a conflict with the French community as well as with the Indo-Chinese.

Within the framework of a general discussion of ‘the state of the welfare state’ in economically advanced West European democracies, this paper offers an account and interpretation of how the Nordic welfare states, often perceived as the most comprehensive and ‘generous’ welfare states, met a number of challenges in the 1990s. Economic problems were most critical in Finland and Sweden in the early 1990s, and social policy reform activities with the aim of modifications of programmes and cutbacks in expenditure have been most pronounced in these countries. A single common denominator for Nordic welfare state development in the 1990s is a somewhat less generous welfare state, but Norway is generally an exception. The basic structure of the welfare systems has been preserved, and social, health and welfare issues are consistently of high priority for governments and voters. The welfare state is highly valued in Scandinavia, but more space for market and other non-governmental welfare solutions is likely to grow in the future.

Japanese–European relations are a case of their own. They do not fit into the conventional model of intercontinental contacts marred by colonization and one-sided exploration. Today Japan disturbs the mind perhaps more than ever, because it appears so familiar while at the same time retaining certain peculiarities. Mutual perceptions have been ambivalent, but whether we speak of a ‘clash of civilizations’ or simply of effects of globalization, Europe's and Japan's mutual images as well as their roles are subject to change. This essay frames some new approaches presented in this focus under the headings of multilateralism, consumer's identities, and, entangled modernities'. It shows that transsocietal studies such as these can contribute to theory formation in their respective disciplines, and, on a more pragmatic level, it argues that mutual relations are no longer characterized by one-sided learning processes but by ‘fuzzy learning’ where both sides profit from each other's experiences.

The theme of what the end of empire meant to metropolitan politics and society is less developed in recent British historiography than in its French and Dutch counterparts. This article examines why, in the British case, decolonization was able to be handled in such a way that relatively little turbulence was transmitted to the Home nation. The essence of that decolonization lay in the separation of metropolitan affairs from overseas transitions. In particular, the loss of colonial sovereignties did not become entangled with national decline. The outcome is a received wisdom compatible with long-standing notions of British constitutionalism, pragmatism and liberty.

According to the classical psycho-physiological theories, human and animal behaviour are dictated by inborn or acquired motivation. The sight of a serpent for example, is an inborn motivation for flight and fear in a dog, but the fear of a policeman, on the other hand, is an acquired motivation in humans. Acquired or derived motivations result from conditioning or associative procedures that come under the general heading of reflex theory. This does not take into account the notion of subjectivity, which subordinates the state to an act whose motive can always be traced back to the satisfaction of an inborn need of the species. But can we always talk about vital needs or acts that have been learnt when we see certain ways of behaving which cannot be explained or justified by any utility?

Until Japan opened its shores in the 1850s, images of Japan in Europe were meagre and long outdated. In Sweden, attitudes to Japan have been heavily influenced by the writings of Carl Peter Thunberg from 1793 and by the lack of imperial traditions as well as the strong national respect for equality

The paper presents a preliminary and partial analysis of the information collected in a comparative 12-country study of the adjustment of national employment and social-welfare policies to the increasing internationalisation of product and capital markets. After the postwar decades, when national governments were still able to control their economic boundaries, the first international challenge came in the form of the oil-price crisis of 1973/74, which confronted industrial economies with the double threat of cost-push inflation and demand-gap unemployment. It could be met if countries were able to achieve a form of ‘Keynesian agreement’ in which expansionary monetary and fiscal policies would defend employment while union wage restraint could be relied on to fight inflation. For this solution, ‘corporatist’ industrial-relations institutions were a necessary, but not a sufficient, condition. Since the second oil-price crisis of 1979–80 was met by restrictive monetary and expansionary fiscal policies in the United States, the steep increase of real interest rates in the international capital markets forced other central banks to raise interest rates accordingly. As a consequence, employment-creating investments could only be maintained if the share of profits in the national product was significantly increased. Under the pressure of rapidly rising unemployment, unions in most countries were forced to accept this massive redistribution from labour to capital. In the 1990s, finally, the international integration of product and capital markets has been constraining private sector employment as well as the financial viability of the welfare state. Now, however, institutional differences among different types of revenue systems, welfare states and employment systems – Scandinavian, Anglo-Saxon and Continental – are creating important differences in vulnerability that can no longer be met by standardised responses. This paper concludes with an examination of the specific problems faced by, and the solutions available to, the different countries included in the study.

On the rare occasions when Japan's relations with Europe are examined, they tend to be fixed within a trilateral structure at whose apex is the United States. This triangular framework was established in the aftermath of World War II, as a result of direct American involvement in the socio-economic reconstruction of Japan and the major countries of Western Europe. The current article examines how the very nature of the triangular relationship has changed over time, with the result that the trilateralism of the 1990s – in contrast to its earlier form – has served to facilitate the development of bilateral relations between Japan and the European Union and its member states.

This article places European welfare states squarely in today's European integration context and looks optimistically at social policy perspectives ‘top down’ from the European level. It has the needs of European policy makers in mind, and thus their interests in optimal policy mixes, lessons from national experiences and in a new institutional architecture that links EU member states more effectively into All-European corridors of reform efforts. The authors argue that the overriding need in welfare state reform is to identify new value combinations and institutional arrangements in national systems that are both mixed – in terms of solidarity and growth objectives – and virtuous, that is capable of producing advances on all necessary fronts. The authors recapitulate the EU's present social agenda – where the search for ‘new value combinations’ is seen to be most actively undertaken. They take up the nature of the ‘bottom up’ challenges to, and the adjustment problems of, the four different sets of European welfare states at length and also their differing needs for functional, distributive as well as normative re-calibration. They present core components of an optimal adjustment strategy that could reconcile growth with solidarity. Finally, they focus on different instruments that might further substantiate the role the EU could play in preserving and developing the ‘European Social Model’ in different welfare domains.

The decolonization of Indonesia is far from being a peripheral issue for Dutch national identity. Since the 1970s, but especially in 1995, public debate has erupted in an attempt to come to terms with this part of national history. The protestant ethic is still so strong that discussions revolve in particular around morality and a final verdict. Opinion leaders and historians have, however, not been able to solve the issue, so that the way in which the Netherlands lost their Southeast-Asian colony continues to trouble the Dutch self-image.

The article discusses various aspects of cultural research from the point of view of academies. More specifically it aims at outlining the history of The Royal Academy of Letters, History and Antiquities in Stockholm, which was officially responsible for the cultural heritage of Sweden until the 1970s. Since then it has become an independent learned society for the humanities and social sciences, but it still takes a great interest in ancient monuments and the protection of culturally precious milieus.

A copious sea literature exists in nineteenth-century France, and the works of such figures as Hugo, Baudelaire, Michelet and Rimbaud contain a recurrent tension between two divergent views of maritime experience. On the one hand, the sea offers the encouraging spectacle of endless possibility and plurality, but on the other hand it is an emblem of intellectual defeat and of humankind at the mercy of an inhospitable natural world. In major works by Mallarmé (1842–98) and Debussy (1862–1918) this contradiction is placed centre stage. The poet and the musician have found ingenious ways of maintaining intellectual and artistic control while constructing ‘open’ textures designed to recreate the sensations of chaos and contingency. In both works – Un Coup de dés jamais n'abolira le hasard (1897) and La Mer (1905) – the remorseless action of the sea is associated with the periodic achievement and loss of aesthetic structure.

The article gives, first of all, a general presentation of the European Space Agency (ESA), followed by a more detailed outline of the ESA's Science Programme, its content, resources, organization, advisory structure and decision procedures. The various types of missions and the place they occupy in the programme are described. From a scientific point of view, these missions fit into four main themes of research, which are also potential ‘roadmaps’ for international collaboration. In the second part of the article, an outline is given of most of the projects that have been already undertaken, are in process or are being planned at the present time.

When a package of political reform bills was enacted in Japan in 1994, commentators predicted that Japanese politics would fundamentally change. After a series of corruption scandals, the new legislation tightened the system of legal controls, increased penalties for wrongdoing by politicians and made the flow of money more transparent. One key element of the reform package was the introduction of government subsidies for political parties. These funds were intended to strengthen the role of political parties and, at the same time, to close the gap between voters and politicians. Based on a comparison between the German and Japanese systems of political finance, this paper argues that government subsidies have not brought parties and voters closer together. While the distance between politics and big business in Japan has increased since 1994, change has come from the business side, not as a result of the new regulations. In the long run, the new Japanese political finance system will not bridge the gap between political elites and ordinary citizens.

Multinational corporations from Japan and Western countries have played an active role in the economic development of Southeast Asia and have, during this time, undergone several developments. The recent economic crisis and efforts by the countries of the region to promote economic integration have again forced corporations to reconsider their strategies. Based on an historical overview, this article examines current strategies and, in particular, addresses the driving forces that are underlying the corporate behaviour of companies from different home countries. It argues that while corporate nationality has, to some extent, been important in the past, it will lose significance as multinational corporations are increasingly developing organizational cultures of their own.

A shift in seeing took place in Western Europe, marked by the transition from the geometrical optics of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries to the physiological optics of the nineteenth century. Within the same time-frame, the sea (like the mountains) came to be valued as an entity in itself, and not just as a source of challenge, danger or ecstasy. The coupling of these two phenomena makes for the tracking of parallel effects: the diminution of anthropocentricity in the change from monocular to binocular vision; the substitution of plurality of point of view for the recessional perspective of the Renaissance; and a revisitation of the interrelationships and metamorphoses characteristic of the Baroque in terms of new polyvalent or interdisciplinary approaches.