Thesis (Ph.D.)--Texas Christian University, 2006. / Title from dissertation title page (viewed Sept. 7, 2006). Includes abstract. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Brenda Cappucio, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of Modern Languages and Linguistics. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed Sept. 18, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains vii, 176 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (M.A.)--Florida State University, 2006. / Advisor: Max Paul Friedman, Florida State University, College of Arts and Sciences, Dept. of History. Title and description from dissertation home page (viewed June 7, 2006). Document formatted into pages; contains v, 94 pages. Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2004. / Includes bibliographical references.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Texas at Austin, 2008. / Vita. Includes bibliographical references.

The scholarly field on decentralization and its relationship with secessionism is divided. Two camps can be distinguished, with opposite conclusions concerning the merits of autonomy concessions. A lack of systematic attention given to the varying capacity of decentralization to produce contrary outcomes has been identified. To address this, an in-depth case analysis on decentralization and secessionism in Spain and Catalonia was conducted. Using a theoretically-guided process tracing approach, this study explores the role of the state on the causal argument. Main findings suggest an increase in secessionist activity when full inclusion through central power sharing arrangements within the state’s executive organs is absent or limited.

A marriage between the English Prince and the Spanish Infanta was deemed desirable following the signing of the Anglo-Spanish peace treaty in London in 1604. After several years of tortuous negotiations, the match failed in 1624 and England declared war on Spain the following year. This thesis addresses the end of the Anglo-Spanish Match negotiations in the period 1617-1624 by placing reasons for its failure in the global context of European diplomacy and dynastic politics in the early seventeenth century. Traditional historiography has considered the failure of the marriage diplomacy as the inevitable consequence of religious differences and cultural misunderstandings between England and Spain. Consequently, scholars have only looked within Europe when investigating the end of the union. My research, however, depicts a more composite picture not only by expanding the geographical boundaries of the investigation but also by demonstrating the extent to which new imperial rivalries played a much greater role in the marriage diplomacy than has previously been recognised. In the first chapter, I discuss the notion of reason of state in the relationship between England and Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century and I investigate the way in which the choice politically and/or economically most favourable was often taken regardless of religious considerations and increasingly in response to extra-European concerns. The body of the thesis is then dedicated to a few episodes when the imperial rivalry between England and the Iberian Peninsula influenced the end of the negotiations. In the second chapter, I look at Walter Raleigh’s second expedition to Guyana and the actions of the Spanish ambassador in London, Count of Gondomar, who asked that Raleigh should receive an exemplary punishment in order to maintain the marriage agreement after the English explorer had attacked Spanish settlements. In the following chapter, I move towards the East and analyse the taking of the Portuguese port of Hormuz in the Persian Gulf by the English East India Company in 1622. In doing so, I outline the complex dynamics underlying the union of the Iberian crowns (1580-1640) as well as the specific repercussions of this episode on the Infanta’s dowry to be given by Spain to England. The fourth chapter introduces a further key player in both European diplomacy and the imperial rivalry between Spain and England, which is to say the Dutch. By looking at the ‘massacre’ at Amboyna in 1623, I prove that the rivalry with the Dutch in the Spice Islands, and especially the executions at Amboyna, initially pushed King James to pursue the marriage alliance with the Spanish Habsburgs with even greater commitment. In the last chapter, I look back at Europe to discuss how the two composite monarchies reacted to the arrival at their respective courts of the news of recent episodes of conflict in the West and East Indies. This concluding chapter argues that the awareness in Madrid and London of what had happened in the Indies put additional burdens onto the already deteriorating marriage negotiations and fundamentally contributed to their failure. Thus, the thesis sheds light on a well-known episode of Anglo-Spanish relations by observing it through a new lens. As a result, I improve our traditional understanding of the end of Anglo-Spanish Match as well as of global connectedness in the early seventeenth century.

No description available.

This thesis is comprised of three essays relating to long term unemployment in Spain. The first chapter is methodological analysis of the main dataset that is used throughout the thesis. The second and third chapter provide two applications of the dataset for the study of long term unemployment. The methodology in these chapters can be easily adapted to study unemployment in other countries. Chapter 1. On the use of administrative data for the study of unemployment Social security administrative data are increasingly becoming available in many countries. These are very attractive data as they have a long panel structure (large N, large T) and allow to measure many different variables with higher precision. Because of their nature they can capture aspects that are usually hidden due to design or timing of survey data. However, administrative data are not ready to be used for labour market research, especially studies involving unemployment. The main reason is that administrative data only capture those registered unemployed, and in some cases only those receiving unemployment benefits. The gap between total unemployment and registered unemployment is not constant neither across workers characteristics nor time. In this paper I augment Spanish Social Security administrative data by adding missing unemployment spells using information from the institutional framework. I compare the resulting unemployment rate to that of the Labour Force Survey, showing that both are comparable and thus the administrative dataset is useful for labour market research. I also explore how the administrative data can be used to study some important aspects of the labour market that the Labour Force survey can’t capture. Administrative data can also be used to overcome some of the problems of the Labour Force survey such as changes in the structure of the survey. This paper aims to provide a comprehensive guide on how to adapt administrative datasets to make them useful for studying unemployment. Chapter 2. Unemployment Duration Variance Decomposition `a la ABS: Evidence from Spain Existing studies of unemployment duration typically use self-reported information from labour force surveys. We revisit this question using precise information on spells from administrative data. We follow the recent method proposed by Alvarez, Borovickova and Shimer (2015) for estimating the different components of the duration of unemployment using administrative data and have applied it to Austria. In this paper we apply the same method (the ABS method hereafter) to Spain using Spanish Social Security data. Administrative data have many advantages compared to Labour Force Survey data, but we note that there are some incompleteness that need to be enhanced in order to use the data for unemployment analysis (e.g., unemployed workers that run out of unemployment insurance have no labour market status in the data). The degree and nature of such incompleteness is country-specific and are particularly important in Spain. Following Chapter 1, we deal with these data issues in a systematic way by using information from the Spanish LFS data as well as institutional information. We hope that our approach will provide a useful way to apply the ABS method in other countries. Our findings are: (i) the unemployment decomposition is quite similar in Austria and Spain, specially when minimizing the effect of fixed-term contracts in Spain. (ii) the constant component is the most important one; while (total) heterogeneity and duration dependence are roughly comparable. (iii) also, we do not find big differences in the contribution of the different components along the business cycle. Chapter 3. Search Capital and Unemployment Duration I propose a novel mechanism called search capital to explain long term unemployment patters across different ages: workers who have been successful in finding jobs in the recent past become more efficient at finding jobs in the present. Search ability increases with search experience and depreciates with tenure if workers do not search often enough. This leaves young (who have not gained enough search experience) and older workers in a disadvantaged position, making them more likely to suffer long term unemployment. I focus on the case of Spain, as its dual labour market structure favours the identification of search capital. I provide empirical evidence that search capital affects unemployment duration and wages at the individual level. Then I propose a search model with search capital and calibrate it using Spanish administrative data. The addition of search capital helps the model match the dynamics of unemployment and job finding rates in the data, especially for younger workers.

This work is a study of the Catalan nationalist experience under the Franco regime, (1939-1975). Its aim is to account for the transformed status of Catalan nationalism at the dictatorship's end and explain the emergence of Convergencia i Unio (Convergence and Union), which since 1980 has become the political embodiment of Catalanism. Prior to 1939, with the achievement of the Catalan autonomy statute, Catalan nationalism had seemed to be embarked on a programme of the Catalanisation of society. In 1939, with Francoist victory in the Spanish Civil War (1936-39), it appeared certain that the Catalan nationalist movement would be crushed. Yet, this did not happen and it emerged in 1975 with more widespread social acceptance than ever before. This study is principally concerned with the relations between Catholicism and Catalanism. The Catalan Church had been involved in the Catalanist movement in the late nineteenth century but it became marginalised by the time of the Second Spanish Republic (1931-39). In 1936 the Catalan Church underwent a ferocious assault that included the execution of over 2,000 priests and members of religious orders. The victory of Spanish Nationalism in 1939 not only restored the Church, but gave it unprecedented power and influence over Catalan society. This new position in Catalan society gave the Church an opportunity to re-create Catalanism. This study argues that, for most of the Franco regime, Catalanism underwent a Catholicisation. Until the mid-1960s the only legally permitted Catalan-language publications were religious. Furthermore, Catholicism was greatly influential in civil society and in the re-formulation of Catalan culture. The origins of Convergencia i Unio are also to be found in the activities of the Catalan-nationalist business class. As will be seen, this sector was also transformed by the Franco dictatorship. No study in English or Catalan has examined Catalonia 1939-75 that has explained the emergence of the Catholic-influenced Convergencia i Unio or the changes that have taken place in Catalan culture and Catalanist ideology during this period.