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11121. Denmark's Fifth EU-Referendum

Author:
Lykke Friis
Publication Date:
12-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
For a short period in May 1998, Denmark once again found itself in the European limelight. After the Danish no to the Maastricht Treaty in June 1992, European governments held their breath when the Danes were called to the ballot box on the 28th of May to accept or reject the Treaty of Amsterdam. A quick glance at the actual debate and the final result could easily leave the impression that everything was business-as-usual. Just like in 1972, 1986, 1992 and 1993 the debate largely centered around broad issues, such as the pros and the cons of Danish EU-membership and the danger of 'little Denmark' being swallowed by the 'big EU'. The final outcome of the referendum also looked familiar: Although 55.1 per cent of the Danish population voted in favor of the Treaty, a large minority continued to give an EU-Treaty their thumbs-down.
Topic:
Foreign Policy and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe

11122. 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

11123. Norden: A Community of Asecurity

Author:
Pertti Joenniemi
Publication Date:
06-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Danish Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Traditionally regarded as a fairly stable configuration, Norden has in recent years become one of the more uncertain cases on the European agenda. Obviously, it cannot remain unaffected once a new and different logic sets in and drastically reshapes the political landscape also in the northern part of Europe. The range of options is quite broad. Norden might establish itself as a central acronym or, on the contrary, develop into one of the more problematic configurations with a rather bleak future.
Topic:
Security and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe

11124. 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

11125. The Honecker Trial: The East German Past and the German Future

Author:
A. James McAdams
Publication Date:
01-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
Fifty years after the Nuremberg tribunals, Germany is once again caught up in a series of controversial trials involving former dictators. This time officials of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR) sit in the dock. Some observers have criticized these proceedings, maintaining that they will result in the imposition of an arbitrary form of 'victor's justice.' Others have claimed, in contrast, that the cumbersome German Rechtsstaat ('state under the law') will prove incapable of responding to public demands for retribution. In this paper the author maintains that Germany's courts have not been at a loss to answer these complaints. By grounding their judgments in preexisting East German law, the courts have managed to bring some of the GDR's former leaders to justice while at the same time guaranteeing most defendants the full protections of the rule of law. In the process the courts have even conveyed an important message about the terms under which both German populations will be brought back together again.
Topic:
Civil Society, Democratization, Social Movement, and Transitional Justice
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, and East Germany

11126. German Capitalism: Does It Exist? Can It Survive?

Author:
Wolfgang Streeck
Publication Date:
03-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
In the roughly four decades between the end of the Second World War and German unification, West German society gave rise to a distinctive kind of capitalist economy, governed by nationally specific social institutions that made for high international competitiveness at high wages and, at the same time, low inequality of incomes and living standards. Already by the late 1980s, when the differences in performance and social organization between the West German economy and its main competitors came to be widely noticed, the continued economic viability of the 'German model' began to appear doubtful to many. Shortly thereafter, the survival of the German version of advanced capitalism became tied to its successful extension to the former East Germany. With the 1992 completion of the European Internal Market, it became in addition dependent on the compatibility of German economic institutions with the emerging regime of the integrated European economy.
Topic:
Civil Society, Development, Governance, Capitalism, Economic Growth, Social Justice, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

11127. Another Institutionalization: Latin America and Elsewhere

Author:
Guillermo O'Donnell
Publication Date:
03-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The paper expresses skepticism about concepts current in the contemporary literature on democratization, such as 'democratic consolidation' and/or the 'lack of institutionalization' from which most of the new democracies supposedly suffer. The further claim is made that these democracies-or 'polyarchies', to use the term preferred here-have, in fact, two very important institutions, elections and particularism/clientelism, which are not generally recognized as such due to the narrow way in which political scientists usually conceptualize institutions. Finally, the paper traces some correlates and elective affinities resulting from what it labels 'informal institutionalization.' The main argument is that, in order to contribute to improving the quality of many of the new polyarchies, analysts must describe their main features realistically, which requires moving well beyond merely negative characterizations limited to what these countries seem to lack in comparison with older polyarchies.
Topic:
Democratization, Governance, and Institutions
Political Geography:
Europe and Latin America

11128. Disaggregating Political Regime: Conceptual Issues in the Study of Democratization

Author:
Gerardo L. Munck
Publication Date:
08-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The increasingly global scope of democratization has challenged comparativists to engage in crossregional research as part of a collective enterprise. The response to such a challenge, however, hinges upon their ability to both base their research on a set of clear concepts, a prerequisite for theory-building, and clarify their method of case selection, a prerequisite for theory-testing. While these conceptual issues have yet to be fully resolved, I show how the work of a group of 'regime analysts' provides the best starting point for scholars interested in this enterprise. For this purpose, I show how the disaggregation of the concept of political regime provides the basis for a distinction among three analytically separable problems--the process of transition, the outcome of this process of transition, and the process of consolidation--and for more nuanced distinctions in terms of modes of transition, regime types and subtypes, and degrees of consolidation. I also show how the problem of conceptual stretching is avoided by regime analysts in the course of case selection through the vertical organization of their concepts along a ladder of generality and the application of a simple rule. Finally, I show how the study of political regimes on the basis of quantitative indices of democracy fails to avoid the problems of conceptual conflation and conceptual stretching.
Topic:
Democratization, Politics, and Democracy
Political Geography:
Europe and South America

11129. Accountability for Past Abuses

Author:
Juan E. Méndez
Publication Date:
09-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Kellogg Institute for International Studies
Abstract:
The transitions to democracy in the 1980s have yielded a wealth of experience regarding the way societies reckon with a recent past of massive human rights violations. This paper looks at the most influential literature produced contemporaneously with those experiences and analyzes its current validity in the light of new contexts in which the issue arises. The author places emphasis first and foremost on the duties that the State owes to the victims of human rights violations and to society and then looks at the objective limitations that most transitions place on governments' ability to satisfy demands for truth and justice. These duties are part of an emerging rule of international law that demands that certain crimes should not go unpunished. But the obligations of the State to the victims and to society are varied and not dependent on each other; even if prosecution and punishment are rendered legally or politically impossible, the duties to disclose all that can be established about each violation, to offer reparations, and to dismiss the culprits from the armed and security forces remain fully in force.
Topic:
Democratization, Human Rights, Social Movement, Democracy, and Public Policy
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, South America, Central America, and Caribbean

11130. International Conferences: The Postwar Transformation of Germany Democracy, Prosperity and Nationhood

Author:
Gregg O. Kvistad, Andrei S. Markovits, Thomas Banchoff, Wolfgang Krieger, Patricia Davis, Jost Halfmann, Peter H. Merkl, Donald P. KOmmers, Ernst B. Haas, Peter Kruger, Ludger Lindlar, Christhard Hoffman, Charles Maier, and Michaela Richter
Publication Date:
11-1995
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
The founding of the Federal Republic of Germany as a democracy had two primary negative referents: the institutional weakness of the Weimar Republic that made it susceptible to the Nazi seizure of power and the authoritarian statist tradition of the nineteenth century. This essay argues that the institutionalization of the professional civil service in the early Federal Republic drew selectively on these negative examples, somewhat ambiguously exchanging the location of political parties and the professional civil service, but retaining substantial elements of subsequent redefinition of the role of the German citizen. Throughout the 1970s and the 1980s, German statism was rendered "inappropriate" not only for German society, but also for the institutional identity of Germany's venerated professional civil service.
Topic:
Cold War and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany