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81. Rights and the Hijâb: Rationality and Discourse in the Public Sphere

Author:
Howard Adelman
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Human Rights and Human Welfare - Review Essays
Institution:
Josef Korbel Graduate School of International Studies, University of Denver
Abstract:
When I took my family to France for one of the hottest summers on record, we went to a local municipal pool in Beaune. After paying the en trance fee and entering the pool area, we were informed that my children would not be allowed to swim wearing their North American boxer-style swimming shorts. “Public health” required that they wear speedo-type suits. No reason or evidence was offered to explain the policy. The officials simply said it was French law. The swimming pool administration generously provided washed speedos. My children had a great time. The next day, my youngest son developed an itch in his crotch. When we took him to the doctor, he was diagnosed with a serious skin infection most likely contracted from the borrowed swim suit.
Topic:
Civil Society, Islam, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe, France, and North America

82. "Subaltern Nationalism" and the West Berlin Anti-Authoritarians

Author:
Jennifer Ruth Hosek
Publication Date:
03-2008
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
German Politics and Society
Institution:
German Politics and Society Journal
Abstract:
The West Berlin anti-authoritarians around Rudi Dutschke employed a notion of subaltern nationalism inspired by independence struggles in the global South and particularly by post 1959 Cuba to legitimate their loosely understood plans to recreate West Berlin as a revolutionary island. Responding to Che Guevara's call for many Vietnams, they imagined this Northern metropolis as a Focus spreading socialism of the third way throughout Europe, a conception that united their local and global aims. In focusing on their interpretation of societal changes and structures in Cuba, the anti-authoritarians deemphasized these plans' potential for violence. As a study of West German leftists in transnational context, this article suggests the limitations of confining analyses of their projects within national or Northern paradigms. As a study of the influence of the global South on the North in a non-(post)colonial situation, it suggests that such influence is greater than has heretofore been understood.
Topic:
Nationalism and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe, Germany, Cuba, Island, and Berlin

83. Serbia's New Government: Turning from Europe

Publication Date:
05-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Crisis Group
Abstract:
Serbia finally has a new government but one that is deeply divided between pro-Western and nationalist forces. Facing two difficult issues–Kosovo status and cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY)–its choice is between moving towards European integration or on to a more isolationist path. The government's composition, deep mistrust among many of its members and the parliament's nationalist majority suggest it will follow the second option. Pro-Western forces have suffered a significant setback, the government is vulnerable to manipulation by the security services and oligarchs, and the system of divided responsibility for the security services renders unlikely serious cooperation with the ICTY, especially the arrests of Ratko Mladic and Radovan Karadzic. Although Kosovo independence could destabilise the government, it may surprise and last far longer and prove more stable than expected. The West should prepare for Serbia turning increasingly away from Europe and towards Moscow.
Topic:
International Relations, Government, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Yugoslavia, Moscow, and Serbia

84. Energy Sovereignty and Security

Author:
Greg Austin and Danila Bochkarev
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
Energy security has re-surfaced as a headline issue in the policy councils of Europe and the Americas in a way not seen since the 1970s. On the one hand, some leaders believe that there is a new energy rivalry with ominous geopolitical overtones, and they look at Russia and China with suspicion in this regard. On the other hand, at a more commercial level, there has been rising uncertainty about oil supply and demand, because of political instability in the Persian Gulf and rampant consumption in the major industrial countries and emerging economies. Price volatility, long a feature of the oil market, reached levels not seen for some years, leading to fresh concerns about 'peak oil'.
Topic:
Development, Energy Policy, Globalization, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Russia, China, America, and Europe

85. New Modes of Governance in the EU: Common Objectives versus National Preferences

Author:
Martin Rhodes and Manuele Citi
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Research Papers Archive
Abstract:
The emergence in the European Union of new modes of governance (NMG) such as the Open Method of Coordination (OMC) has produced an enormous literature that falls into four broad categories: a theoretical approach seeks to explain why such methods emerged and locates them in existing theories of European integration, policy-making and institutional change; a strongly normative approach extols the nonhierarchical, deliberative virtues of NMG and 'soft' law and prioritizes the potential of the OMC as a font of 'social learning'; a more empirical approach assesses new modes in operation across different policy areas and countries; and a more critical approach assesses the claims made on the OMC's behalf as an effective instrument of policy making. Apart from our concern to critically review this literature, our aim is also to focus in on one of its greatest deficiencies: the absence, hitherto, of a comprehensive, multi-level framework for analysis, capable of specifying the conditions under which OMC practices are likely to produce a convergence of member state policies on common objectives. In doing so we also bring into our account a parallel literature – on policy diffusion and learning – that is frequently referred to by studies of the OMC and other new modes of governance but is rarely integrated systematically into their analysis.
Topic:
International Relations, Nationalism, and Politics
Political Geography:
Europe

86. Europe: Crises of Identity

Author:
Shada Islam
Publication Date:
02-2007
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
International Peace Institute (IPI)
Abstract:
The European Union's emergence as a leading global political and economic actor is an important, exciting and inspiring development in modern history. The signature in 1957 of the EU's founding Treaty of Rome, creating the European Atomic Energy Community (EURATOM) and the European Economic Community (EEC) has been followed rapidly by a spate of initiatives designed to draw EU members into an ever closer economic and political union.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe and Rome

87. Glasnost at Twenty

Author:
Leon Aron
Publication Date:
01-2007
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
Abstract:
The twentieth anniversary of the beginning of the Russian revolution (1987–91) is a fitting occasion to assess the true scale and the impact of the national spiritual liberation known as glasnost, and to put it into a broader context of the history of ideas and their role in revolutions. Such an examination is doubly useful today, when a steady stream of Kremlin-sponsored propaganda seeks to distort and minimize what glasnost has wrought.
Topic:
Development, Government, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

88. Russia and Europe: National identity, national interest, pragmatism, or delusions of empire?

Author:
Robert F. Miller
Publication Date:
05-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Australian National University Department of International Relations
Abstract:
Following the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, Moscow's weight in international relations underwent a tremendous decline. To appreciate the extent of change in the Russian Federation's (RF) foreign policy since the end of Soviet communism it is worth taking a brief look at the international relations of its predecessor, the USSR. An essential feature of Soviet foreign policy was that it was ideologically driven. Western commentators tended to play down this feature or treat it as mere window dressing for what was really just imperialism 'with a socialist face'. But it was more than that. It gave Soviet policy-makers a sure sense of identity and a guide, however faulty, to national ('international proletarian') interest.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Development, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Russia, Europe, and Asia

89. European Constitutional Identity?

Author:
Wojciech Sadurski
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Research Papers Archive
Abstract:
The language of common European constitutional identity is distinguishable from that of common European constitutional traditions in that the former does not focus so centrally on the past, and is independent of the legal doctrinal language of the EU law. When discussing constitutional identity, there are, in particular, the following four questions which deserve to be addressed: (1) What are we doing when we are “constructing” the European constitutional identity; what are the features of the interpretation leading to such a construction? (2) What values/ideals/principles are a part of our constitutional identity? (3) How does European constitutional identity relate to the specific constitutional identities of European nation-states? (4) What is the relationship between the discourse about political integration within the EU and the existence of European CI, as separate from, and paramount to, identities of member states? On that last issue it is submitted that there is no simple connection between ascertaining the dominant identity at a particular level and the implications for the division of authority between the European and national levels within the EU.
Topic:
Government, International Cooperation, and Nationalism
Political Geography:
Europe

90. State Sovereignty, Popular Sovereignty and Individual Sovereignty: from Constitutional Nationalism to Multilevel Constitutionalism in International Economic Law?

Author:
Ernst-Ulrich Petersmann
Publication Date:
12-2006
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Research Papers Archive
Abstract:
This paper discusses the basic constitutional problem of modern international law since the UN Charter: How can the power-oriented international legal system based on “sovereign equality of states” be reconciled with the universal recognition of “inalienable” human rights deriving from respect for human dignity and popular sovereignty? State representatives, intergovernmental organizations, international judges and non-governmental organizations often express different views on how far the universal recognition of human rights has changed the subjects, structures, general principles, interpretative methods and “object and purpose” of international law (e.g. by the emergence of erga omnes obligations and jus cogens limiting state sovereignty to renounce human rights treaties, to refuse diplomatic protection of individuals abroad, or domestic implementation of international obligations for the benefit of domestic citizens). The paper explains why effective protection of human rights at home and abroad requires multilevel constitutional protection of individual rights as well as multilevel constitutional restraints of national, regional and worldwide governance powers and procedures. While all European states have accepted that the European Convention on Human Rights and EC law have evolved into international constitutional law, the prevailing paradigm for most states outside Europe remains “constitutional nationalism” rather than “multilevel constitutional pluralism.” Consequently, European proposals for reforms of international economic law often aim at “constitutional reforms” (e.g. of worldwide governance institutions) rather than only “administrative reforms”, as they are frequently favoured by non-European governments defending state sovereignty and popular sovereignty within a more power-oriented “international law among states.”
Topic:
Economics, Nationalism, Politics, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
Europe and United Nations