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172. Go Back to Basics at the IMF
- Author:
- Desmond Lachman
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- The Europeans who will nominate a new managing director for the International Monetary Fund should view their task as an opportunity to return the Fund's focus to exchange-rate issues and assistance of countries in fiscal crisis.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
173. Holy War in Europe
- Author:
- Reuel Marc Gerecht
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- At an alarmingly increasing frequency, westernized Muslims and converted Christians in Western Europe are joining radical Islamic organizations to wage jihad against the United States and its allies. These young Muslim males funnel continental anti-Americanism and the alienation of centuries-old Islamic struggle against the Christian West into full-fledged rage that threatens to divide Western allies who together withstood the advance of the Islamic empires during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Middle East
174. The Emptying of Russia
- Author:
- Nicholas Eberstadt
- Publication Date:
- 02-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- Russia, whose birth rates have declined and whose mortality rates have dramatically increased in the last several decades, faces a demographic crisis. Thus far, Russian political leaders have focused on trying to increase birth rates, but a greater sense of urgency must be applied to diminish mortality rates and to respond to health threats, including HIV/AIDS.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
175. In Iraq with the Coalition of the Willing
- Author:
- Radek Sikorski
- Publication Date:
- 02-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- Although the American media seems to focus exclusively on American--and occasionally British--troops in Iraq, the coalition does include soldiers from Central and Eastern European nations, among others. The difficulties of forming ad hoc international coalitions for military operations, however, may lead the United States to rely in the future upon associations like NATO, which are already experienced in coordinating military operations.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Democratization, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, America, Europe, and Middle East
176. The Putin Restoration
- Author:
- Leon Aron
- Publication Date:
- 03-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- The Revolution had, indeed, two distinct phases: one in which the sole aim of the French nation seemed to be to make a clean sweep of the past; and a second, in which attempts were made to salvage fragments from the wreckage of the old order. For many of the laws and administrative methods which were suppressed in 1789 reappeared a few years later, much as some rivers after going underground re-emerge at another point, in new surroundings.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Economics, and Emerging Markets
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, Asia, and France
177. The Duma Election
- Author:
- Leon Aron
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
- Abstract:
- The December 7, 2003, election to the Russian parliament, the State Duma, has been portrayed in the U.S. media as mostly a product of the Kremlin's machinations. Its "administrative resources"--most importantly, its control of national television channels--are said to be almost entirely responsible for the winning performance of the "party of power," United Russia, which garnered 37 percent of the party-list vote among twenty-three parties and blocs on the ballot.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Economics, and Emerging Markets
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
178. The Language of Democracy: Vernacular Or Esperanto? A Comparison between the Multiculturalist and Cosmopolitan Perspectives
- Author:
- Daniele Archibugi
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Will Kymlicka has argued “democratic politics is politics in the vernacular.” Does it imply that democratic politics is impossible in a multilingual community, whether at the local, national, regional or global level? This paper discusses this assumption and maintains that democratic politics should imply the willingness of all players to make an effort to understand each other. Democratic politics imply the willingness to overcome the barriers to mutual understanding, including the linguistic ones. Any time that there is a community of fate, a democrat should search for methods that allow deliberation according to the two key conditions of political equality and participation. If linguistic diversity is an obstacle to equality and participation, some methods should be found to overcome it, as exemplified by the Esperanto metaphor. The paper illustrates the argument with four cases of multi-linguistic political communities: a) a school in California with English-speaking and Spanish-speaking students; b) the city of Byelostok in the second half of the nineteenth century, where four different linguistic communities (Polish, Russian, German and Yiddish) coexisted. This led Markus Zamenhof to invent Esperanto; c) the linguistic problems of the Indian state, and the role played by English – a language unspoken by the majority of the Indian population in 1947 – in developing Indian democracy; and d) the case of the European Parliament, with twenty languages and a wealth of interpreters and translators.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, India, California, and Germany
179. Democratic Contestation, Accountability, and Citizen Satisfaction at the Regional Level
- Author:
- Endre M. Tvinnereim
- Publication Date:
- 08-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Democratic theory tells us that competition between political parties fosters more responsive government by disciplining elected leaders. Yet party competition may not always attain the levels desirable for holding leaders accountable, notably at the sub-national level. This paper hypothesizes that variations in competition-induced accountability affect regional, or state, government behavior, and that this variation is reflected in citizen satisfaction with regional government performance. The hypothesis is confirmed using survey data from sixty-eight German state election studies. Specifically, a widening of the gap between the two main parties of each state is shown to affect subsequent individual-level satisfaction negatively. This finding presents a conjecture that should be generalizable to other countries with strong sub-national units.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
180. The European Union: Democratic Legitimacy In A Regional State?
- Author:
- Vivien A. Schmidt
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Democratic legitimacy for the EU is problematic if it is seen as a future nation-state. If instead the EU were seen as a regional state—with shared sovereignty, variable boundaries, composite identity, compound governance, and a fragmented democracy in which the EU level assures governance for and with the people through effective governing and interest consultation, leaving to the national level government by and of the people through political participation and citizen representation—the problems of the democratic deficit diminish for the EU level. But they become even greater for the national level, where the changes to national democratic practices demand better ideas and discourses of legitimization. A further complicating factor results from problems of “institutional fit,” because the EU has had a more disruptive impact on “simple” polities, where governing activity has traditionally been channeled through a single authority, than on more “compound” polities, where it has been more dispersed through multiple authorities.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, Politics, and Sovereignty
- Political Geography:
- Europe