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141. Can Europe Be Told From The North? Tapping Into the EU's Northern Dimension

Author:
Pertti Joenniemi
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The European Union has been furnished with a Northern Dimension (ND). The initiative, taken originally by Finland in 1997, has landed on the Union's agenda yielding policy documents, high-level conferences and some projects pertaining to Europe's North. It outlines, in terms of the spatial markers used, a sphere that reaches far beyond the northernmost North. The initiative aims, in one of its aspects, at turning northernness into a representational frame and regime that nurtures communality and influences the relations between the Union, its northern member states, some accession countries and Russia as well as Norway as non-applicants. The neo-North embedded in the move offers a joint arena for those already 'in', actors on their way 'in' and the ones that remain 'out'. In essence, it mediates in their relations, and contributes to what Christiansen, Petito and Tonra have called the "fuzziness" of the European Union by blurring established divisions.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Norway

142. The Role of the University in Ethnic Conflict Transformation, Democratization, and Developing Human Rights in the Balkans

Author:
Zlatko Isakovic
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The aim of this paper is to elaborate the role of the University in democratization, developing human rights and transforming ethnic conflicts in the Balkan states proposing creative and applicable solutions. The main conclusions are, first, that if a system cannot be qualified as democratic one, appears the complex dilemma what could and should come first: developing democracy (including the university education) or transforming ethnic conflicts or preventing their escalations/deescalating them. Second, during conflict escalation, the Balkan and other University's duty is to offer to country's decision makers and the rest of the society and the world the knowledge residing on scholars in peace and conflict studies, philosophers, historians, economists, engineers, political scientists and many other fields that can help understand the goals, attitudes, interests, identities, and/or behaviors of the other and our conflict side as well as of the mediators, arbitrators, etc.
Topic:
Democratization, Education, and Human Rights
Political Geography:
Europe and Balkans

143. "Realisms at war": Robert Gilpin's political economy of hegemonic war as a critique of Waltz's neorealism

Author:
Stefano Guzzini
Publication Date:
03-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
There are two main ways to approach the general topic “International Political Economy and war”. One consists in adding a list of items to a definition of war already known. This usually includes a longer list of strategically important economic resources for which countries might go to conflict or they might need in a conflict. Some of this comes now often under the grandiose name of “geo-economics”. Another approach, however, would look what a different understanding of human motivation and the international system makes to our very understanding of war.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, Economics, International Organization, and War
Political Geography:
Europe

144. Global Ungovernance: Mercenaries, States and the Control over Violence

Author:
Anna Leander
Publication Date:
06-2002
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
There is a tendency for political protestors and academic critics of 'glo bal-isation' to focus their attention on the institutions of Global Governance. The meetings of the EU and WTO have to placed in far off, complicated location to be safe from the p hysical threats of the pro testors. And there is literally a flood of critical writings on the impact of the IMF, the World Bank or the G7 on developing countries. However, in this article I want to shift the focus to another, and it seems to me potentially more threatening tendency: the tendency towards 'ungovernance'. In particular I want to dis-cuss the role of mercenaries as an example of this d evelopment.
Topic:
Security, Government, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Europe

145. Breaking with Tradition: Service Trade Liberalization in the EU and Germany

Author:
Jette Steen Knudsen
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This chapter asks why and how services that were not previously thought of as tradable have increasingly been opened up to international competition in EU member states including even in Germany. The chapter contrasts an explanation that focuses on the impact of economic interests with an explanation that focuses on the impact of EU membership. The chapter argues that lobbying by producers or users of services cannot fully explain reform nor does EU membership simply constrain reluctant member state governments to adopt new legislation. Instead the chapter argues that in important service sectors the German government has promoted trade reform even sometimes in the face of strong opposition from providers, consumers, and unions. The chapter maintains that a crucial key to liberalisation is the emergence of a break in government opposition. In particular, the ability of the government to re-interpret services as regular tradable products combined with new regulation to "shelter" exposed groups such as consumers and workers against potential harm. Implications of this claim for future service sector liberalisation are subsequently discussed.
Topic:
Economics and International Trade and Finance
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

146. Adaptation of the Legal Systems of Candidate Countries - the Case of the Baltic States

Author:
Christen Boye Jacobsen
Publication Date:
08-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
In all the countries of Eastern Europe, the collapse of the socialism presented the legal system and the lawyers and administrators with an immense conceptional and practical challenge. In a couple of years, and in a constantly changing economic and political climate, they were required To introduce the rule of law and democracy (der demokratisch-freiheitliche Rechtsstaat), To introduce and implement the rules and institutions of a market economy, To modernise the normative acts and the public institutions of virtually all aspects of a modern society, and To implement the EU-acquis.
Topic:
Democratization, Economics, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe

147. Danish Security Policy over the last 50 Years - Long-Term Essential Security Priorities

Author:
Bertel Heurlin
Publication Date:
07-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
This article is about the general priorities of Danish security policy over the last 50 years. But what exactly is security policy – and how should one perceive priorities? First a few remarks on semantics. The term security policy is new. From 1949 Denmark only gradually used the term security policy, rather than defence policy and foreign policy. In 1945 the United Nation's Security Council had been established. It was to act on behalf of the Member States when international peace and security were threatened. In 1947 the National Security Council was established in the United States. The Council was evidently intended to take care of the US' national security. With the introduction of these vital institutions the step was taken towards using the terms ”international” and ”national security policy”. In general the term ”security policy” became common in the beginning of the 1960s. Minister for Foreign Affairs Per Hækkerup talks about security policy in his book on Danish Foreign Policy from 1965. Furthermore the Ministry of Foreign Affairs in 1967 could publish the first book on Danish security policy.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

148. Greenland's geopolitical reality and its political-economic consequences

Author:
Jens Kaalhauge Nielsen
Publication Date:
06-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Geopolitics is an old concept, which received its classic modern form in the work of Friedrich Ratzel, Rudolf Kjéllen, Harold J. Mackinder, Alfred T. Mahan, and Karl Haushofer. It can be regarded as an intellectual approach that aims at establishing a political grammar of world politics, through a scientific discipline based on the objective reality of geography. Thus, geopolitics is often seen as a “realistic” attempt to establish world policy as an objective science based on some kind of "physico-spatial reference". The implicit assumption is a discreet claim that it is possible to study international politics and the allocation of power as one studies the weather: as a system based on objective, natural laws with a fixed and firmly established pattern of forces and indispensable reference points. Hence, Halford J. Mackinder believed that he could identify "the Geographical Pivot of History." In this way, somewhere behind the concept of geopolitics as a scientific concept lies a compelling idea: a theory of the international system based on sheer objective forces, which can be reduced to the invariable necessities of an ultimate "physical" matrix that was merely given expression by the vocabulary of "national interests." We find the same notion in the concept of "realpolitik," the idea that it is possible to conduct a policy grounded on a realm of crucial necessities, as in Bismarck's policies framed in the image of Iron and Blood.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

149. In Tempestuous Waters: Denmark and the WTO Regime

Author:
Erik Beukel
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
International trade negotiations and the World Trade Organisation (WTO) have come into the public limelight. Until a few years ago, the governance of the world trading system, encapsulated in General Agreement on Tariffs and Trade (GATT), was considered a mundane and dull subject to which only a few people with a special economic interest payed attention. Today, however, the problems dealt with in the WTO affect much broader economic interests and attract attention from different political persuasions and social movements, as illustrated by the battle in Seattle, in December 1999, when the Third Ministerial conference of the WTO was met by massive demonstrations organised by multifarious NGOs. Generally, multilateral economic institutions, such as the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF), and the WTO, have become tempestuous waters, because among other things these institutions are contested by a medley of non-governmental organisations (NGOs) and grass roots movements (O'Brien et al. 2000). The conflict centres on “globalisation”, a controversial and ambiguous notion (Hirst and Thompson 2000), and the WTO is a focal point of the globalisation storm (Hart 1997).
Topic:
Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

150. European Defence: Visions and Realities?

Author:
Julian Lindley-French
Publication Date:
04-2001
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Good morning, ladies and gentlemen. It is a real honour for me to be here today to address you on the complex subject of European Defence: Vision and Realities. I am grateful as ever to Bertel Heurlin and David Munis Zepernick for arranging this chance to discuss with you European defence at what is a crucial moment. Last time I was here I spoke a lot about visions, so today, as you will hear, the emphasis will be on realities rather than visions.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe