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72. Assesment of the Finnish-Russian Border: The Case of Vaalimaa Border Crossing Point
- Author:
- Vadim Kononenko and Jussi Laine
- Publication Date:
- 10-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA)
- Abstract:
- The “Friendly EU Border” project, as a part of which the present report has been prepared, commences from the assumptions that external EU borders represent an important aspect of the EU's policies in the field of security and of Justice and Home Affairs. Finland, a country with a long external border with Russia, has been a member of the EU since 1995. Thus, Finland's experience is pertinent for other EU Member States that joined the Union in 2004 and 2007, most of which share their external borders with third countries outside the EU. The EU membership has certainly affected the operations of the Finnish border control, but – perhaps even more notably – the Finnish border control expertise has had a crucial influence on the way border control has been developed on European scale.
- Topic:
- Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Finland, and Asia
73. The refugee, the sovereign and the sea : EU interdiction policies in the Mediterranean
- Author:
- Thomas Gammeltoft-Hansen
- Publication Date:
- 03-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- This paper starts from the encounter between a European navy vessel and a dinghy carrying boat refugees and other desperate migrants across the Mediterranean or West African Sea towards Europe. It explores the growing trend in the EU of enacting migration control at the high seas or international waters – so-called interdiction. It is argued that these forms of extraterritorial migration control aim at reconquering the efficiency of the sovereign function to control migration, by trying to either deconstruct or shift correlate obligations vis-à-vis refugees and other persecuted persons to third States. In both instances, European States are entering into a sovereignty game, in which creative strategies are developed in order to reassert sovereign power unconstrained by national and international obligations.
- Topic:
- Human Welfare, International Law, Migration, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Europe and West Africa
74. Will the Real Serbia Please Stand Up?
- Publication Date:
- 04-2008
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- Kosovo's independence declaration on 17 February 2008 sent shock waves through Serbia's politics and society, polarising the former in a manner not seen since the Milosevic era. Rioting led to attacks on nine Western embassies, destruction of foreign property and massive looting. The government fell on 10 March, split over whether to pursue a nationalist or pro-Western path. Belgrade's efforts to create a de facto partitioning of the north of Kosovo threaten the new state's territorial integrity and challenge deployment of European Union (EU) missions there, and Serbian parliamentary and local elections on 11 May are unlikely to change the basic policy towards the new state, even in the unlikely event a pro-Western government comes to power. They may, however, well give Serbia's nationalist parties new leverage.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Conflict Prevention, Nationalism, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, and Balkans
75. Essential Steps for the European Union after the "No" Votes in France, the Netherlands Ireland
- Author:
- John Temple Lang and Eamonn Gallagher
- Publication Date:
- 08-2008
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Centre for European Policy Studies (CEPS)
- Abstract:
- In the referendum on the Treaty of Lisbon in June 2008, Irish voters who voted against the Treaty gave several specific reasons as well as a variety of vague or general reasons that were unrelated to anything that was in the Treaty. These vague or general reasons are important because they probably were also significant influences in the “no” votes in France and the Netherlands. Moreover, they may be shared by a substantial but unknown number of people in other EU member states who did not get an opportunity to vote in a referendum on the Lisbon Treaty or the Treaty for a Constitution. There were positive referendum results in Luxembourg and Spain. Other countries promised referenda, but did not hold them.
- Topic:
- International Organization, Regional Cooperation, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Europe, France, Netherlands, and Ireland
76. Migration and Cultural Interaction across the Centuries: German History in a European Perspective
- Author:
- Dirk Hoerder
- Publication Date:
- 06-2008
- Content Type:
- Journal Article
- Journal:
- German Politics and Society
- Institution:
- German Politics and Society Journal
- Abstract:
- Once upon a time, German studies seemed to be an easy field to define. Like fairytales, the resulting stories were addressed to a faithful audience—but here, an audience of adults, true believers in the nation and nation state. Today, by contrast, we understand that defining area studies is, in fact, a highly complex task involving overlapping regions and social spaces, and analyses of borderlands, interpenetrations, and métissage, as well as of processual structures and structured processes. Even geographies have become “processual.” The origins of area studies are often traced to the U.S., the hegemon in the Atlantic world's academe, and the emergence of American studies in the 1930s. Nevertheless, something like area studies also emerged in Europe in the late nineteenth century, juxtaposing 1) a country and its colonies; and 2) a country and its neighbors. The former were inferior societies, the latter competitors in world markets and, repeatedly, enemies in war. Area studies—after a preceding period of knowledge acquisition as reflected in early mapmaking— became colonial studies, competitor state studies, enemy state studies—in each case transnational, transterritorial, and transcultural. Unable to deal with the concept of “trans,” i.e., with fuzzy borders and shifting categories and geographies, scholars in each bordered country set their own society, their Self, as the “yardstick.” The Other, the delimited opposite, was meant as a background foil before which their respective own nation was to appear as the most advanced and to which—knowledge and interest are inextricably linked—the profits from worldwide trade and the spoils from colonial acquisitions were naturally due (Folien- or Spiegeltheorie). Since then, motivations for country studies have become more complex but they basically are framed still by bordered territories, “national culture,” national consciousness or identity, nation-state policies, and international relations. Once the ideology of “nation” is abandoned, the blindfold removed so to say, it appears that German-language people may be studied in America or Russia—or Africans, Poles, and Turks in the German-language societies (plural!).
- Topic:
- Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Russia, America, Europe, Turkey, and Germany
77. State Sovereignty, Popular Sovereignty and Individual Sovereignty: from Constitutional Nationalism to Multilevel Constitutionalism in International Economic Law?
- Author:
- Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann
- Publication Date:
- 12-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Research Papers Archive
- Abstract:
- This paper discusses the basic constitutional problem of modern international law since the UN Charter: How can the power-oriented international legal system based on “sovereign equality of states” be reconciled with the universal recognition of “inalienable” human rights deriving from respect for human dignity and popular sovereignty? State representatives, intergovernmental organizations, international judges and non-governmental organizations often express different views on how far the universal recognition of human rights has changed the subjects, structures, general principles, interpretative methods and “object and purpose” of international law (e.g. by the emergence of erga omnes obligations and jus cogens limiting state sovereignty to renounce human rights treaties, to refuse diplomatic protection of individuals abroad, or domestic implementation of international obligations for the benefit of domestic citizens). The paper explains why effective protection of human rights at home and abroad requires multilevel constitutional protection of individual rights as well as multilevel constitutional restraints of national, regional and worldwide governance powers and procedures. While all European states have accepted that the European Convention on Human Rights and EC law have evolved into international constitutional law, the prevailing paradigm for most states outside Europe remains “constitutional nationalism” rather than “multilevel constitutional pluralism.” Consequently, European proposals for reforms of international economic law often aim at “constitutional reforms” (e.g. of worldwide governance institutions) rather than only “administrative reforms”, as they are frequently favoured by non-European governments defending state sovereignty and popular sovereignty within a more power-oriented “international law among states.”
- Topic:
- Economics, Nationalism, Politics, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Europe and United Nations
78. Domestic Politics and Referendums on the Constitutional Treaty
- Author:
- Gemma Mateo González
- Publication Date:
- 05-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Research Papers Archive
- Abstract:
- How can the decision of ten member states to subject the Constitutional Treaty of the European Union (EU) to a referendum be explained? Recently, some scholars have considered the need to give legitimacy to the decisions of the EU as one of the principal motivations for holding referendums. An empirical analysis of the motivations behind the decisions in favour of referendums uncovers a completely different reality, however. Political actor s used the possibility to hold referendums about European matters in a strategic way to strengthen their positions in the domestic context rather than to correct the democratic deficit of the EU. The analysis of a database with the positions of all the political parties represented in the national parliaments of the twenty-five member states confirms this point.
- Topic:
- Politics, Sovereignty, and Treaties and Agreements
- Political Geography:
- Europe
79. The Formation of a Mercantilist State and the Economic Growth of the United Kingdom 1453-1815
- Author:
- Patrick Karl O'Brien
- Publication Date:
- 07-2006
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- New institutional economics lacks a theory of state formation which could help us to deal with the mega question of why some states became more efficient than others at establishing and and sustaining institutions. Some kind of middle range theory could be formulated based upon historical case studies. This paper considers the case of Britain and as its title suggests degrades the myth of the United Kingdom as the paradigmn example of liberalism and laisser faire. In making its precocious transition to and industrial market economy the kingom's history is best represented as a case of successful mercantilism.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Britain, United Kingdom, and Europe
80. The U.S. and Transatlantic Relations: On the Difference between Dominance and Hegemony
- Author:
- David P. Forsythe
- Publication Date:
- 06-2005
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- It is important to distinguish hegemony from dominance, as various authors like Machiavelli, Gramsci, and Nye have argued. This distinction allows one to appreciate that the first Bush Administration attempted to be a dominant power rather than a hegemonic one. A long list of assertions of essentially unilateral dominant power projections is actually buttressed by two pillars: primary of hard power but also American exceptionalism. By comparison to Europe, the George W. Bush version of American exceptionalism emphasizes traditional and absolute U.S. state sovereignty, a corresponding depreciation of international law and organization, parochialism, and non-muscular multilateralism. Because of all this the U.S. is largely responsible for the crisis in Atlanticism. The Europeans, however, have made their own contributions to this crisis. The crisis needs to be resolved, as the management of various international problems requires trans-Atlantic cooperation. Fortunately there are signs of movement toward this cooperation, although the signals are mixed on the U.S. side.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Diplomacy, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe