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901. Altruism and Imperialism: The Western Religious and Cultural Missionary Enterprise in the Middle East

Author:
Eleanor Doumato, Andrew Porter, Samir Khalaf, Reeva Simon, Elizabeth Thompson, Carolyn Goffman, Hans-Lukas Kieser, Jeremy Salt, Ruth Kark, Paul Sedra, Michael Zirinsky, Mahmoud Haddad, Linda Herrera, and Eleanor H. Tejirian
Publication Date:
08-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Middle East Institute, Columbia University
Abstract:
The Western missionary enterprise in the Middle East, while in theory altruistic, has generally been considered part and parcel of Western imperialism and colonialism as it evolved in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. However, deconstruction of this enterprise reveals that it was by no means monolithic, nor was it necessarily directly related to or supportive of Western imperial ambitions. This project, of which a conference at the Rockefeller Foundation Conference Center in Bellagio, Italy, in August 2000 is a part, seeks to examine all aspects of the Western missionary enterprise in the Middle East, focusing on its political and social impact on the region as well as on its entanglement with the political and social currents of the Western countries from which it came. Furthermore, the premise of the project is that the missionary enterprise was also the forerunner of the activities of Western nongovernmental organizations in the region, setting the agenda and establishing the categories of these activities in areas including human rights, education, and economic development.
Topic:
Economics, Human Rights, Non-Governmental Organization, and Religion
Political Geography:
Middle East

902. The Role of Muslim Women's Organizations in Family Planning Advocacy in Medan

Author:
Hj. Chalidjah Hasan
Publication Date:
12-2000
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Ralph Bunche Institute for International Studies, City University of New York
Abstract:
This article deals with the role of Muslim women organizations in Medan in the KB (Family Planning) Advocacy. The sources of the article came from the field study with an observation method, in-depth interview and secondary data. The observation was carried out to look directly at activities concerning the KB Advocacy conducted by Muslim women organizations. Meanwhile the depth interview was conducted with the heads of Muslim women organizations and KB clinic staffs, namely doctors and nurses. The secondary data were used to compare the advocacy programs with the written sources, which were relevant with the studied topic. The samples of the study came from the big three Muslim women organizations in Medan, namely `Aisyiah, Muslimat Nahdlatul Ulama, and Muslimat Al- Washliyah.
Topic:
Development, Gender Issues, and Religion
Political Geography:
Asia

903. Popes, Kings and Endogenous Institutions: The Concordat of Worms and the Origins of Sovereignty

Author:
Bruce Bueno de Mesquita
Publication Date:
02-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Studies Association
Abstract:
Very rough preliminary and incomplete draft The modern state-centric international system is generally thought to have its origins in the Treaty of Westphalia. From that perspective, the modern sovereign state owes its origins to the resolution of the Thirty Years War. Prior to 1648, international politics are thought to have been less territorially focused, with feudal ties taking precedence over considerations of state. Here I set out a modest theory of competition between the Catholic church and European kings, especially the Holy Roman Emperor and the kings of France and England, during the years from 1122 onward. That theory suggests that the modern territorial state has its origins in the Concordat of Worms, 500 years earlier than is generally thought. It also suggests that the development of important institutions of the modern sovereign state are an endogenous product of strategic maneuvering between the Catholic Church and European kings over political control within their domains. Naturally, other factors, including competition between kings and barons, and aristocrats and merchants also play an important part in the evolution of political institutions. Those other considerations, however, are not examined here so that what I propose is a partial, incomplete account of the early developments that culminated in the modern territorial, sovereign state. Specifically, the theory maintains that the development of “modern” political institutions and the history of economic growth in Europe are to a significant degree the consequence of competition between monarchs and the Catholic church. This views stands in contrast to the general accounts of economic growth or of institution building found in the sociological literature beginning with Weber or in the historical and much of the political economy literature.
Topic:
International Law, Religion, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Europe

904. The Role of Politics in Contemporary Russian Antisemitism

Author:
Betsy Gidwitz
Publication Date:
09-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
In recent months, since shortly after the collapse of the Russian ruble in August 1998, an upsurge of antisemitism in Russia has generated a startling increase in emigration of Russian Jewry. Among Jews in Israel and many diaspora countries, concern has grown about the fate of those Jews remaining in Russia, the largest of the post-Soviet states.
Topic:
Politics and Religion
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

905. Israel's Relations with the Vatican

Author:
Aharon Lopez
Publication Date:
03-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
During the ceremony of the presentation of my credentials as the Ambassador of Israel to the Holy See on April 10, 1997, I told His Holiness that, actually, this was not my first connection with the Vatican. In fact, when I served as Ambassador of Israel to the Republic of Cyprus, in one of the ceremonies there, I was approached by the non-resident Ambassador of Outer Mongolia, who asked me whether I represented the Holy See in Cyprus. Of course I answered that I represented the State of Israel. Then, looking at my head, he remarked: "Oh, you are right, sir; now I can see the difference in the color!" Of course, he was referring to my skullcap.
Topic:
International Relations, Diplomacy, and Religion
Political Geography:
Europe, Middle East, Israel, and Vatican city

906. Defining Limits on Religious Expression in Public Institutions: The Turkish Crisis Over Headscarves

Author:
George E. Gruen
Publication Date:
02-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Jerusalem Center for Public Affairs
Abstract:
On June 10, 1998, Turkish police and Islamist students scuffled at Istanbul University after authorities refused to allow eleven women wearing Muslim headscarves to take final exams. The students attempted to force their way into the examination hall past police who were helping college authorities enforce a long-standing ban on Islamist attire in places of education, government ministries, and other public institutions. Istanbul University, like nearly all educational institutions in Turkey, receives public funding. Similar scuffles had occurred the previous day when police forcibly removed headscarves from some girls' heads, the pro-Islamist newspaper Zaman said. The paper printed photographs of what it said were female students who fainted in distress after their headscarves had been torn off.
Topic:
Gender Issues, Government, Human Rights, Islam, and Religion
Political Geography:
Turkey and Middle East

907. Modell Deutschland as an Interdenominational Compromise

Author:
Philip Manow
Publication Date:
05-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Usually, Germany's social market economy is understood to embody a compromise between a liberal market order and a corporatist welfare state. While this reading of the German case is certainly not entirely wrong, this paper argues that only if we account for the close intellectual correspondence between lutheran Protestantism and economic liberalism on the one hand and between Catholicism and welfare corporatism on the other, can we fully comprehend the nature of the German post-war compromise. In particular, this perspective allows to better explain the anti-liberal undercurrents of Germany's soziale Marktwirtschaft. It was especially the role which Protestant Ordoliberals ascribed to the state in upholding economic order and market discipline which accounts for the major difference between 'classic' and 'German-style' economic liberalism. Yet, the postwar economic order did not represent a deliberately struck compromise between the two major Christian denominations. Rather, Germany's social market economy was the result of the failure of German Protestant Ordoliberals to prevent the reconstruction of the catholic Bismarckian welfare state after the authoritarian solution, which Ordoliberals had endorsed so strongly up until 1936 and from which they had hoped the re-inauguration of Protestant hegemony, had so utterly failed. Since the ordoliberal doctrine up to the present day lacks a clear understanding of the role of the corporatist welfare state within the German political economy, its insights into the functioning logic of German capitalism have remained limit. The paper also claims that accounting for the denominational roots of the postwar compromise allows us to better understand the relationship between consociationalism and corporatism in 'Modell Deutschland'.
Topic:
Economics, Government, Political Economy, and Religion
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

908. Between the Living and the Dead: The Politics of Irish History

Author:
Bernard Rorke
Publication Date:
01-1999
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for the Study of Democracy, University of Westminster
Abstract:
The destruction of the past ... is one of the most characteristic and eerie phenomena of the late twentieth century. Young men and women at the century's end grow up in a sort of permanent present lacking any organic relation to the public past of the times they live in.
Topic:
Government, Religion, and Terrorism
Political Geography:
Europe

909. State And Region: The Spanish Experience

Author:
David Bright
Publication Date:
06-1999
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
One of the most interesting consequences of the development of the European Union has been the stimulus it has given in recent years to the rediscovery of region within European states. As the supra-state functions of the European institutions in Brussels have burgeoned and the intrinsic sovereignty of the state in Europe has declined, so regions have acquired an ever greater social and political significance. Of course, in some cases, the state was traditionally federal in nature—as with Germany\'s Länder system—and, politically at least, regional aspirations have been satisfied. In the past two decades, however, regional aspirations have expanded into social and cultural spheres that require a new, defined political context. Even in such long-established states as the United Kingdom, such pressures now have to be acknowledged as sub-state factors enter into the complex array of political elements that go to make up the contemporary Union. In this context the Spanish experience is illuminating, both in the way it demonstrates how such tendencies should be accommodated and in the way in which regional populations respond. It is, in fact, a paradigm for a development that will become inevitable and universal as the power of the state declines within the wider structures of contemporary \'Euroland\'.
Topic:
Government and Religion
Political Geography:
Europe and Germany

910. Algeria In Crisis

Author:
George Joffé
Publication Date:
06-1998
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Chatham House
Abstract:
The current situation in Algeria is the direct result of a crisis that developed in the wake of the country-wide riots in 1988 and appeared to have been resolved by political and economic reform up to 1992. Despite a brief period of political liberalization — which, in reality was unsuccessfully manipulated by the regime in power to guarantee its own survival — Algeria has been in the grip of a virtual civil war for the past five years. In these circumstances, the behaviour of the regime and of its clandestine opposition have become parallel experiences, despite the gestures towards renewed democratization made in the past two years. The reality for the vast majority of Algerians — with figures for civilian deaths to date ranging from 50,000 to 120,000— is one of constant fear, both of arbitrary arrest and worse from the authorities and of summary and terminal justice from the clandestine opposition. For these circumstances to be properly appreciated, therefore, some knowledge of the events leading up to the contemporary situation is necessary.
Topic:
Conflict Resolution, Politics, and Religion
Political Geography:
Algeria and Hiroshima