Students of political development try to understand how territorial systems of government arise and disintegrate. They ask how political order and unity is fostered, maintained and lost and under what conditions political community, stable boundaries and legitimate institutions are possible among component units (individuals, groups, organizations, states) that are different in many respects.
Topic:
Development, International Organization, and Politics
Civil liability is a much older regulatory device than administrative regulation. The emergence of a regulatory state is a relatively new phenomenon. Within regulatory States different modes of regulation and administrative tools have developed, including the extensive use of the private law.
The recent period of Europe an integration has witnessed the attempt by elites to formalise the long-standing trend towards a constitutionalisation of the European Union. The paper asks whether this process of constitutionalisation, together with a twin process of territorialisation – the development of the EU as bounded political space – can be seen as a move towards state- building at the European level. In order to address these issues, the paper assesses in turn the significance and the impact each of the two processes may have on the 'remaking' of Europe. In this context, the EU's Nordic Dimension, the debate surrounding the Turkish application for EU membership and the evolving Neighbour Policy of the Union are looked at in more detail. By way of conclusion this paper argues that the discourses – rather than the decisions – which have dominated the integration process in recent years, mark something of a departure from the previous 'post-Westphalian' path of European integration, and instead point towards a more statist conception of the Europe an Union. It remains to be seen to what extent these discourses will subsequently have ramifications in normative, institutional and policy-terms, and what resistance to the choices implicit in these discourses will have to confront.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Government
Language minorities can be found as evidence of unfinished nation-building in relatively closed territorial settlements all over contemporary Europe. From a comparative perspective, different paths of accommodating linguistic diversity can be followed resulting in very dissimilar regimes of legal, political and cultural recognition. In recent years, standardisation of minority protection has taken place, with a new emphasis on the values of linguistic diversity, non-discrimination and tolerance. As will be argued, the expanding rights of language minorities must be understood in relation to a re-structuration of nation-states in Europe and a re-evaluation of difference in the course of European integration. The confrontation with internal diversity and the confrontation with a Europe of deep diversity are closely interlinked setting the conditions for the unfolding of a new politics of recognition towards language minorities. This changing minority-majority relationship and the related processes of Europeanization of opportunity structures for the political and cultural mobilisation of language minorities shall be analysed with reference to specific case studies from Germany, France and Spain.
The overarching argument of this paper is that the party systems of less developed countries are less institutionalized than those of the advanced industrial democracies. The paper examines three differences between the party systems of the advanced industrial democracies and party systems of less developed countries. First, we show that most democracies and semi-democracies in less developed countries have much higher electoral volatility than the advanced industrial democracies. Second, much of the literature on parties and party systems assumes the context of institutionalized party systems with strong party roots in society and further presupposes that programmatic or ideological linkages are at the root of the stable linkages between voters and parties. In the party systems of most democracies and semi-democracies in less developed countries, programmatic or ideological linkages between voters and parties are weaker. Third, linkages between voters and candidates are more personalistic in less developed countries than in the advanced industrial democracies.
Topic:
Democratization, Development, Government, and Third World
In political science, rational learning and bounded learning are commonly studied as two opposing theories of policy choice. In this paper, I use a rational-learning approach to reach conclusions about bounded learning, showing that the two theories are not necessarily incompatible. By examining a rational-learning model and the decisions of a set of developing countries to open up their trade regimes, I show that countries are particularly influenced by the choices of neighbouring countries and by particularly successful policy experiences. These are two typical contentions of the bounded-learning literature. I argue that bounded learning and rational learning yield the same results as soon as one drops the rational-learning assumption that there are zero costs to gathering new information. I use the discussion on rational learning versus bounded learning as a basis for exploring more general issues concerning the diffusion of policy innovations.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, Development, and Politics
Probably not one American in a hundred knows anything about the short-lived Republic of West Florida (1810). At first glance it might seem to have sprung from a worthy fight for self-government and independence from Spain. West Floriday, that lovely nation, Free from king and tyranny, Thru' the world shall be respected, For her true love of Liberty. On closer inspection, however, this venture, born of low-level filibuster and high-level intrigue, illustrates the same ingrained American propensity for land-grabbing so evident in other U.S. acquisitions of territory.
The Black Sea is at the forefront of the strategic agenda for 2 005, though its ordinary geographical name tends to conceal the dynamic geopolitical realities of an area where a transformation is in full swing.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Development
This second booklet of reflections on Black Sea security issues is the companion volume to the one published during the continuation of the seminar sponsored by the NSC at Constanta (Romana) on 6 and 7 June 2005 on the subject of “The Role of the Wider Black Sea Area in a Future European Security Space”.
Topic:
International Relations, Security, and Development
This volume contains the three presentations delivered on the occasion of the 52nd Anciens' Annual Conference and Seminar held on 23 September 2005 at the NATO Defense College in Rome. The seminar was dedicated to the subject of “Security Strategies”–especially those of the United States, the European Union, and of course the 1999 NATO Strategic Concept. One major issue examined at the seminar was the impact that the evolution of the first two strategies may have on the Alliance's current strategic concept.