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431. On the Road to a German “Postnationalism”? Athletic Competition between the Two German States in the Era of Konrad Adenauer

Author:
Martin H. Geyer
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
Sports have always been used to promote the nation state and the invention of national traditions with national symbols such as flags and national hymns playing an important role. This article looks at the peculiar situation of the post-war period when two Germanys established themselves also in the field of sports, yet cooperated in some athletic disciplines, and, most important of all, at the Olympic Games until 1968. This raised a great number of delicate political questions, particularly the politics of the nonrecognition of the GDR which strove hard to establish itself internationally by way of the international sports movement. Konrad Adenauer and the German Sports Organization clashed on this issue which brought to the fore the question of a German and an emerging West-German identity. In order to describe this negotiation of the nation state in the realm of sports, this article tries to make fruitful use of the term postnationalism in order to understand the ambiguities of identity of Germans towards their nation state. It also takes a brief look at the Olympic Games of 1972, which epitomizes more than anything else the peculiar postnationalism of the Federal Republic.
Topic:
Politics and War
Political Geography:
Germany

432. Representation without Emulation: German Cultural Diplomacy in Search of Integration and Self-Assurance during the Adenauer Era

Author:
Johannes Paulmann
Publication Date:
06-2007
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
The article investigates an essential characteristic of the Federal Republic of Germany's search for self-assurance in foreign cultural representations after World War II. A normative behavioral pattern, described here as an “attitude of restraint,” emerged during the Adenauer era, resulting in representations without emulation. The article focuses on German participation in world fairs—an example that reveals the multi-layered mechanisms linking diplomacy with culture, political attitudes with individual experiences and memories, and foreign relations with social conditions. The formation of an attitude of restraint constituted part of the long-term process of West German self-education and shaped cultural identities in the Federal Republic. The self-assurance re-found during the Adenauer era is placed in the context of political debates about the break with the Nazi past, defense against communist East Germany, and the selective turn toward an international modernity. Furthermore, the article offers an explanation regarding the diffusion of certain behavioral norms through everyday experience and practice.
Topic:
Politics and Culture
Political Geography:
Germany

433. Scientists in Time of War: World War II, the Cold War, and Science in the United States and France

Author:
Dominique Pestre
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Before addressing its central concern––the convergence of science, war, institutions, and politics in the postwar period in France and the United States––, this essay evokes how scientific knowledge had been of importance to warfare and economic elites in the preceding centuries. In the 1940s and 1950s, scientific activities were profoundly redefined. A culture of laboratory solutions, of calculus, and management won the day. For the scientists, that meant versatility and a willingness to work between disciplines and métiers and to confront the nation's main concerns. It also led to increasingly technocratic versions of politics. Due to science, the state became a managerial apparatus, a "modernizer" arbitrating among different scenarios. Contrary to what happened in the United States, science was not center stage in France in the 1940s and early 1950s. The habitus of scientists was that of the prewar period, and they were still not technique- oriented. They had a more cultural definition of their trade and were not opportunists whose aim was to become pragmatically efficient in the world of business and military action. From the mid-1950s, things started to evolve due to a strong economic recovery and because French scientists had now caught up with the latest developments. The final break, however, occurred in France only when de Gaulle abandoned the Algerian war and elected for an autonomous nuclear deterrence system. By putting la stratégie de l'arsenal at the core of national development, de Gaulle significantly transformed French science, society, industry, and the military.
Topic:
Cold War and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and France

434. Law and Politics in Interwar France: Pierre Laroque's Search for a Democratic Corporatism

Author:
Eric Jabbari
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
Pierre Laroque, the architect of French social security, emerged during the 1930s as an advocate for the corporatist management of industrial relations. Laroque's corporatist views were an outgrowth of his educational background and his experiences as a young civil servant. A member of the Conseil d'État, he came under the influence of the main doctrines of French public law. During the first half of the twentieth century, legal thinkers such as Léon Duguit and Maurice Hauriou elaborated theoretical justifications for the growing interventionism of the state. As a student of the law, Pierre Laroque became concerned with maintaining the balance between the necessity of state intervention and the preservation of individual and collective rights, thus explaining his interest in administrative decentralization. By the mid-1930s, after being assigned to the Conseil National Économique, he became interested in industrial conflict and applied a similar approach to the issue of collective bargaining. Impressed by the social achievements of Fascist Italy, Laroque advocated the corporatist management of industrial relations, an objective that he promoted in a succession of political and intellectual forums associated with the nonconformist movement. A new collective bargaining mechanism would bring together the state, business, and labor in order to mediate and resolve industrial disputes. Unlike the Fascists, however, this form of corporatism did not break with democratic or republican principles; rather, it was a decentralized administrative structure that compensated for the weaknesses of the collective bargaining process while providing a new forum for the cultivation of social solidarity.
Topic:
Politics and Law
Political Geography:
France

435. Minorities and Protest in Japan: The Politics of the Fingerprinting Refusal Movement

Author:
Michael Strausz
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Institution:
University of British Columbia
Abstract:
In 1985, 10,000 foreign residents of Japan refused to be fingerprinted by the Japanese state. Why did this protest take place when it did, and why have we not seen a movement of similar size and intensity since the end of the fingerprinting refusal movement? This article argues that the fingerprinting refusal movement occurred because a convergence of factors—including demographic change, Japan's ratification of human rights treaties, ideational changes within the Japanese state and the Korean community in Japan, and local political developments—opened a window of political opportunity for activism. Moreover, the reforms that Japan made in the 1970s and 1980s closed that window because they satisfied many of the demands of foreign activists, and activists subsequently had a difficult time finding an issue on which to focus community outrage.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Japan

436. The Resistance of the Westphalian System: September 11 and World Politics

Author:
Gökhan Bacik
Publication Date:
06-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article aims to present several assumptions about world politics since the end of the Cold War. First, as the ancillary argument of this paper, what we have been experiencing since the end of the Cold War era is a sign of a newly emerging world system which bears contradictions with the Westphalian model by focusing on new developments that are inconcistent with the principles of this model. Second, as the basic arguments of this paper, since September 11, the struggle between the Westphalian structure and newly emerging forces has entered a new phase. I take the cognitive process of the current world powers to analyze the struggle between the Westphalian structure and the challenging forces.
Topic:
Cold War and Politics

437. European Union as a Postmodern and Multicultural Space: Technicalization of Politics and the Dilemmas of National Democracies

Author:
Nazim Irem
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
Basic principles of the EU's politics of expansion have begun to be laid down since the mid-1990s following the historical decision to expand the Union towards Eastern Europe. By giving a meta-norm status to the principle of reciprocal intervention, the EU, as described by Robert Cooper, has taken the form of a postmodern state during the long process of integration. Unlike the integration policy, the EU formulates its expansion policy on realistic terms assuming that the candidates, which are not fully incorporated into the post­modern policy realm of the EU, are modern nation states. It is argued that the structural problems such as democratic deficit and/or the erosion of legitimacy inherent to the EU's postmodern integration politics have been exported to the candidate states in the process of the adapta­tion of the acquis communautaire.
Topic:
Politics
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe

438. Globalization of Culture and Change of Established Political Positions

Author:
Kudret Bülbül
Publication Date:
03-2006
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article argues that the modernization process has created standardization in different areas of life, while culture has been relatively and independently preserved during this process. Nevertheless, it is difficult for societies to sustain independent compartments in the cultural area while employing standardized techniques, institutions, and principles in the areas of economics, politics, and technology. This article explores the reflections of members of the Turkish Grand National Assembly (TGNA) on cultural globalization, since the TGNA is the main policy maker in Turkey. Although the perceptions of TGNA members generally differ, according to whether they are members of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) the CHP (Republican People's Party), their approaches do not depart greatly from that expected from general theoretical discussions. The approaches of the members of parliament (MPs) do not pertain to Turkey only.
Topic:
Globalization and Politics
Political Geography:
Turkey

439. From The Élysée Salon To The Table Of The Republic State-Islam Relations and the Integration of Muslims in France

Author:
Jonathan Laurence
Publication Date:
03-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The creation of a representative council for observant Muslims-the Conseil Français du Culte Musulman-is a landmark accomplishment of Fifth Republic France. It is a strong reaffirmation of the republican framework in which the representatives of organized religion are expected to operate in lay France. But it is also an uncharacteristic official acknowledgment of contemporary religious diversity. How did a country whose political system has been notoriously allergic to organized religion decide to assemble and embed Muslim leaders within a state-sponsored institution? Some clues are contained in the remarks above, which hint at the mindset of the ministers in charge of religious affairs. These statements, made by two key actors in the French government's efforts to integrate Islam into French state-church relations, can be seen as rhetorical bookends of a policy process aiming to bring France's Muslim population closer to the state. Over a nearly fifteen-year period, politicians of distinct party traditions drew on competing models of state-society relations to make this politically feasible.
Topic:
Islam and Politics
Political Geography:
France

440. The Politics Of Publishing During The Second Empire: The Trial of Madame Bovary Revisited

Author:
Christine Haynes
Publication Date:
06-2005
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
French Politics, Culture Society
Institution:
Conference Group on French Politics Society
Abstract:
The limited objections raised by members of the book trade to the press law at the time of the trial of Madame Bovary serve to highlight some fundamental characteristics and contradictions of liberalism in mid-nineteenth-century France. In general, liberalism in this time and place emphasized commercial freedom and property rights, at the expense of freedom of speech. In contrast to Anglo-American liberals, French liberals readily sacrificed this last freedom in the interest of "order," which was deemed necessary to promote the growth of commerce. As some of the most recent scholarship on the political culture of the Second Empire (and early- to mid-nineteenth-century France more generally) has shown, property, alongside education, was the main priority for liberals. It was only because property and education seemed to require it that freedom of the press eventually became important to French liberals and republicans. Intellectual freedom entered the political culture, for authors and publishers as well as statesmen, only through the back door of economic liberalism.
Topic:
Politics and Culture
Political Geography:
America and France