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3051. A Bleak Future for the European Project

Author:
Sebastian Rosato
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
The European project seems to have run aground of late. Observers want to know how likely it is that the Europeans will recommit themselves to establishing a political and military union, and what the future holds for the single market and single currency.
Topic:
Security, Economics, Political Economy, and Regional Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

3052. Resource Conflicts over Arable Land in Food Insecure States: Creating an United Nations Ombudsman Institution to Review Foreign Agricultural Land Leases

Author:
Anastasia Telesetsky
Publication Date:
06-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Institution:
The Goettingen Journal of International Law
Abstract:
In the last decade of globalization, States in the Middle East, East Asia, Europe, and North America have looked towards Africa and Southeast Asia for opportunities to lease for 30-50 years large tracts of arable land for production of commodity crops and biofuels in order to meet the needs of home markets. Facing their own governance challenges, States in Africa and Southeast Asia have leased land to private foreign investors without requiring any environmental review or mitigation of the proposed land leases. This paper argues that in food insecure states the recent flurry of land leasing activity to foreign agribusiness is likely to lead to unintended long term consequences for the ecology in land-leasing States by depleting the already fragile environment through monocropping, chemical pesticide and fertilizer applications, and large scale irrigation. This paper argues that international investment law may provide foreign investors with legal protection if land leasing States in the future decide to regulate the leases in a manner that discriminates against large agribusiness. The current proposals for self-regulatory voluntary codes of conduct do not provide sufficient oversight over the leasing process to protect the public's interest in a healthy and productive environment against foreign investors who have under the current lease structure no incentive to improve the land that they are leasing. The creation of an United Nations based ombudsman to provide legal and technical oversight and support for States making long-term leases has greater potential than a voluntary code for ensuring a balanced negotiation among the interests of host State governments for investment, investors for arable land, and the public for long-term sustainability.
Topic:
United Nations
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Middle East, East Asia, North America, and Southeast Asia

3053. Clean Trade in Natural Resources

Author:
Leif Wenar
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
The "resource curse" can strike countries that derive a large portion of their national income from exporting high-value natural resources, such as oil, gas, metals, and gems. Resource-exporting countries are subject to four overlapping curses: they are more prone to authoritarianism, they tend to suffer more corruption, they are at a higher risk for civil wars, and they exhibit greater economic instability. The correlations between resources and such pathologies as authoritarianism, corruption, civil conflict, and economic dysfunction are evident in the list of the five major African oil exporters: Algeria, Angola, Libya, Nigeria, and Sudan. The recent histories of mineral exporters support the correlations: for example, "blood diamonds" fueled Sierra Leone's decade-long civil war, and the continuing conflict in the metal-rich eastern Congo has caused up to 6 million deaths. The phenomenon is not solely African: Burma, Yemen, and Turkmenistan, for example, are also resource cursed. Moreover, poor governance in resource-cursed countries can engender follow-on pathologies, such as a propensity to cause environmental damage both domestically (for example, through the destruction of forests) and globally (through increased greenhouse gas emissions). Most research on the resource curse has focused on the institutions of exporting countries. This essay focuses instead on importing countries, especially those in North America and Europe. I survey how the resource curse impedes core interests of importing states. I then discuss how the policies of importing states drive the resource curse, and how these policies violate their existing international commitments. The second half of the paper describes a policy framework for importing states that can improve international trade in resources for both importers and exporters.
Topic:
Economics
Political Geography:
Africa, Europe, Sudan, Libya, Algeria, Burma, North America, Nigeria, and Angola

3054. "Protectors of Privacy: Regulating Personal Data in the Global Economy" by Abraham L. Newman

Author:
Judith Wagner DeCew
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
Carnegie Council
Abstract:
Abraham Newman has written a thoughtful and provocative book about the protection of privacy and how it has evolved in two dramatically different ways in the European Union and the United States over the past 50 years.
Topic:
Intellectual Property/Copyright
Political Geography:
United States and Europe

3055. Europe's Troubles: Power Politics and the State of the European Project

Author:
Sebastian Rosato
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Security
Institution:
Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
For a decade after the end of the Cold War, observers were profoundly optimistic about the state of the European Community (EC). Most endorsed Andrew Moravcsik's claim that the establishment of the single market and currency marked the EC as “the most ambitious and most successful example of peaceful international co - operation in world history.” Both arrangements, which went into effect in the 1990s, were widely regarded as the “finishing touches on the construction of a European economic zone.” Indeed, many people thought that economic integration would soon lead to political and military integration. Germany's minister for Europe, Günter Verheugen, declared, “[N]ormally a single currency is the final step in a process of political integration. This time the single currency isn't the final step but the beginning.” Meanwhile, U.S. defense planners feared that the Europeans might create “a separate 'EU' army.” In short, the common view was that the EC had been a great success and had a bright future.
Topic:
Disaster Relief
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Germany

3056. Development of International Relations theory in China: progress through debates

Author:
Yaqing Qin
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
International Relations of the Asia-Pacific
Institution:
Japan Association of International Relations
Abstract:
The development of International Relations theory (IRT) in China has been framed by three debates since 1979. The first was about China's opening up to the outside world. It started with the question of whether the world was characterized by 'war and revolution' or 'peace and development' between orthodox and reformist scholars and continued to focus on China's interest between orthodox scholars and the newly rising Chinese realists. It resulted in a wide acceptance of the reformist argument that peace and development characterized our era and of the realist view that China was a normal nation-state and should have its own legitimate national interest. The second started in the early 1990s and centered on the better way of realizing China's national interest. It was between Chinese realists and liberals. While the former emphasized national power, the latter proposed the alternative approach of international institutions. The third debate was on China's peaceful rise. It evolved at the turn of the century, when all the three major American IRTs, realism, liberalism, and constructivism, had been introduced into China and therefore the debate was more a tripartite contention. Realists believed that it was impossible for any major power to rise peacefully, while liberals and constructivists both supported the peaceful-rise argument. Liberals stressed more the tangible benefits derived from international institutions and constructivists explored more China's identity in its increasing interaction with international society. Although it was Chinese constructivists who explicitly discussed the identity issue, all the three debates and all the debating sides have reflected this century puzzle since the Opium War – China's identity vis-à-vis international society. These debates have helped push forward the IRT development in China and at the same time established Western IRT as the dominant discourse. A new round of debate seems likely to occur and may center on the question of the world order. This time it may help the newly burgeoning but highly dynamic Chinese IRT to develop and contribute to the enrichment of IRT as knowledge of human life.
Topic:
International Relations and Development
Political Geography:
China, America, and Europe

3057. Averting Tomorrow's Global Food Crisis: The European Union's role in delivering food justice in a resource-constrained world

Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Oxfam Publishing
Abstract:
Why, in a world that produces more than enough food to feed everybody, do so many – one in seven – go hungry? Oxfam's new global campaign, GROW, seeks answers to this question. GROW aims to transform the way we grow, share, and live together. GROW will expose the failing governments and powerful business interests that are propping up a broken food system and sleepwalking the world into an unprecedented and avoidable reversal in human development.
Topic:
Agriculture, Economics, Foreign Aid, and Food
Political Geography:
Europe

3058. CHALLENGING THE EAST-WEST DIVIDE: INSIGHTS FROM A COMPARISON OF UKRAINE AND ITALY

Author:
Nicole Gallina
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
This article examines how political behaviour has impeded the functioning of political institutions in Ukraine and Italy. It applies an actor-centered institutionalism and argues that even nondemocratic political elites can co-exist within a democratic framework. It analyzes actors' conduct in regard to the democratic institutions of the constitution, judiciary and media. The paper concludes by identifying three pillars of political elite power.
Political Geography:
Europe, Ukraine, and Italy

3059. Mabel Berezin, Illiberal Politics in Neoliberal Times. Culture, Security and Populism in the New Europe (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2009).

Author:
Adriana Marinescu
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
In the aftermath of the Second World War, right-wing movements were a synonym for genocide and racism and a dark stain on the history of Europe. Scholars such as George Mosse, Roger Griffin or Eugene Weber have tried to explain the roots and causes of this phenomenon in order to prevent its reoccurrence. Nevertheless, a few decades later, extremist groups have begun to take over European politics, in spite of the supposedly learnt lessons of the past. What are the legacies, if any, of the former fascist movements and what are the new features of these parties? To what needs do they respond, who is their public and by what means is their message conveyed? Illiberal Politics in Liberal Times tries to provide an answer to these questions, as it focuses on the rightwing movements through the lens of Europeanization and political culture. They have so far been analyzed from various perspectives, but mainly as arising from expected events and relying only on their inner constituencies to act upon domestic and foreign policies.
Political Geography:
Europe

3060. Richard Stahler-Sholk, Harry E. Vanden, and Kuecker, Glen David, (eds), Latin American Social Movements in the Twenty-First Century: Resistance, Power, Democracy (New York: Rowman Littlefield Publishers, Inc. 2008).

Author:
Alexander B. Makulilo
Publication Date:
05-2011
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Central European University Political Science Journal
Institution:
Central European University
Abstract:
After the end of the Cold War imperialism in the form of neoliberalism exerts its hegemony over the entire world. Under what came to be known as the “Washington Consensus”, which emphasizes liberal democracy, market economy and foreign capital investments, the U.S sought to enhance and consolidate its access to cheap natural resources and raw materials from Latin America, thereby capitalizing its domination over the region. Challenging the neoliberal paradigm, the masses in Latin America developed a series of social movements to protest this form of foreign domination. In line with this move, contemporary scholarship in the region is preoccupied with theorizing and understanding the nature, development and impact of these social movements in emancipating the region. Merging theory and practices, Latin American Social Movements provides an in-depth and comprehensive analysis of social movements in the region. It traces the historical origins, evolution, strategies and implications of social movements and their resistance to neoliberal and global capitalism. And therefore, the book challenges the mainstream literature that focuses on “transition to democracy” and that views social movements as merely temporary resistance to authoritarianism and electoral politics that unseat repressive regimes.
Topic:
Cold War
Political Geography:
Europe, Washington, and Latin America