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411. Post-totalitarian Legacies, Civil Society, and Democracy in Post-Communist Poland, 1989-1993

Author:
Grzegorz Ekiert and Jan Kubik
Publication Date:
10-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University
Abstract:
The paper argues that a robust and assertive civil society has emerged in post-communist Poland during the first few years following the fall of state socialism. Civil society is defined as a specific social space and a set of specific social organizations. The most important factors shaping the character of this renewed civil society are the patterns of its institutionalization after 1989, the predominance of organizations inherited from the old regime, and the marginality of anti-systemic groups. The institutional patterns are shaped by the sectoral composition of the new civil society, the relationships among its various organizations, and by these organizations' links to such collective actors/institutions as political parties and state agencies. These patterns influence the quality of political participation and democratic performance.
Topic:
Democratization and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

412. Post-Communist Security Thinking in Russia: Changing Paradigms

Author:
Alexander A. Sergounin
Publication Date:
07-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The end of the Cold War, the collapse of the USSR and its Marxist ideology, and the re-emergence of the Russian Federation as a separate, independent entity have compelled Russia to redefine its national interests and make major adjustments in the spheres of both foreign policy and international relations theory (IRT). These enormous tasks, together with an attendant polarisation of opinion on how to deal with them, have pitted Russia's policy makers and experts against one another in a fierce battle of world views. This debate is far from at an end. Neither a new security identity nor a coherent foreign policy strategy have yet been found.
Topic:
Security, Foreign Policy, Environment, Government, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

413. Structural Liberalism:The Nature and Sources of Postwar Western Political Order

Author:
G. John Ikenberry and Daniel Deudney
Publication Date:
05-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Christopher H. Browne Center for International Politics, University of Pennsylvania
Abstract:
The end of the Cold War has triggered new debates about international relations theory. Most of the attention has been focused on explaining the end of the Cold War. Equally important, however, this epochal development raises new questions about the impact of forty years of East-West rivalry on the relations among the Western liberal democracies. This issue is not simply of passing historical interest because it bears on our expectations about the future trajectory of relations among the great powers in the West. Will the end of the Cold War lead to the decline of cooperative relations among the Western liberal democracies? Will major Western political institutions, such as NATO and the U.S.-Japanese alliance, fall apart? Will "semi-sovereign" Germany and Japan revert to traditional great power status? Will the United States return to its traditional isolationist posture? Our answers to these questions depend upon the sources of Western order: was the Cold War the primary cause of Western solidarity or does the West have a distinctive and robust political order that predated and paralleled the Cold War?
Topic:
International Relations, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, Europe, and Germany

414. The Path to European Integration

Author:
Paul Pierson
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies
Abstract:
Many European and American observers of the EC have criticized "intergovernmentalist" accounts for exaggerating the extent of member state control over the process of European integration. This essay seeks to ground these criticisms in a historical institutionalist" account that stresses the need to study European integration as a political process which unfolds over time. Such a perspective highlights the limits of member state control over long-term institutional development. Losses of control result from member state preoccupation with short-term concerns, the ubiquity of unintended consequences, and processes that "lock in" past decisions and make reassertions of member state authority difficult. Brief examination of the evolution of EC social policy suggests the limitations of treating the EC as an institutional "instrument" facilitating collective action among sovereign states. It is more useful to view integration as a path-dependent process that has produced a fragmented but still discernible multi-tiered European polity.
Topic:
International Organization, Politics, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
America and Europe

415. Numbering British Contention, 1758-1834

Author:
Thomas Chronopoulos
Publication Date:
12-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Studies of Social Change
Abstract:
In the period between 1758 and 1834 repertoires of contention in Britain changed from parochial, particular, and bifurcated to cosmopolitan, modular, and autonomous. In other words, eighteenth century actions "that included a good deal of ceremonial, street theater, deployment of strong visual symbols, and destruction of symbolically charged objects" through the course of time lost their relative predominance and instead "demonstrations, strikes, rallies, public meetings, and similar forms of public interaction came to prevail during the nineteenth century." These new routines for the eighteenth century contentious events are the ones that ordinary people in the United States and Western Europe still to this date principally employ to make claims. This conclusion merges from a systematic study of more than 8,000 contentious gatherings, in Southern England (1758-1820) and Great Britain as a whole (1828-1834).
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Security, Economics, and Politics
Political Geography:
Britain, United States, United Kingdom, Europe, and England

416. Political Identities

Author:
Charles Tilly
Publication Date:
05-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Center for Studies of Social Change
Abstract:
Observation of state-military relations in Israel reveals an apparent paradox: Within a period of about seventy years, the more the militarization of Israeli society and politics gradually increased, the more politicians were successful in institutionalizing effective control over the Israel Defence Forces (IDF, and the pre-state organizations). Militarization passed through three main stages: (1) accepting the use of force as a legitimate political instrument during the pre-state period (1920-1948), subsequent to confrontation between pacifism and activism; (2) giving this instrument priority over political-diplomatic means in the state's first years up to the point in which (3) military discursive patterns gradually dominated political discourse after the 1967 War. At the same time, political control over the IDF was tightened, going from the inculcation of the principle of the armed forces' subordination to the political level during the pre-state period to the construction of arrangements working to restrain the military leverage for autonomous action.
Topic:
Education, Industrial Policy, and Politics
Political Geography:
United Kingdom, Europe, and Israel

417. Nations, Nationalism, and The European Citizen

Author:
John Keane
Publication Date:
10-1993
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
Abstract:
What is a nation? Do nations have a right to self-determination? If so, does that mean that the national identity of citizens is best guaranteed by a system of democratic government, in which power is subject to open disputation and to the consent of the governed living within a carefully defined territory? And what of nationalism? Does it differ from national identity? Is it compatible with democracy? If not, cam its growth be prevented, or at least controlled, so as to guarantee the survival or growth of democracy?
Topic:
Civil Society, Nationalism, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe