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31. Homeros'dan Hobbes ve Ötesine: "Güvenlik" Kavramının Avrupa Geleneğindeki Boyutları

Author:
J. Frederik M. Arends
Publication Date:
09-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
This article examines the historical development of the concept of security in two phases. In the first phase, the word coined by the Romans as 'securitas' and accompanied from the beginning by ambivalence and religious connotations had conceded most of its territory to 'certitudo' at the end of the Middle Ages. In the second phase starting in the times of Thomas Hobbes, it became one of the paradigmatic 'great words' of the modern state. In this phase, 'security' became associated with the genesis of the authoritarian 'super state' committed to the prevention of civil war. This article starts by elaborating the connection between Thomas Hobbes and the ancient Greek historian Thucydides and proceeds by examining the usages of the concept by several contemporary authors.
Topic:
Political Theory and History
Political Geography:
Europe

32. Uluslararası İlişkiler Teorisinde Yerel- Görüşlülük ve Doğu\'nun Özneselliği

Author:
Bahar Rumelili
Publication Date:
12-2009
Content Type:
Journal Article
Journal:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Institution:
Uluslararasi Iliskiler
Abstract:
I argue that International Relations Theory has not been able to transcend its parochialism because it continues to negate the agency of the East. By analyzing the articles published in four leading journals of the discipline between 2002-2007, I find that the number of studies that focus on the East have indeed increased, but most of these studies continue to situate the cases derived from the East in the context of West-centric theories. Even critical approaches continue to position the West as the main subject of international relations and dismiss the mutual constitution and interaction between the East and the West, and the local and global. I contend that the generation of non-Western IR theories is not going to pose an adequate challenge to West-centrism; what is necessary is the formulation of specific propositions on East-West relations that directly counter the established assumptions of West-centric theories.
Topic:
Political Theory
Political Geography:
America, Europe, and Asia

33. The Transformative Power of Europe: The European Union and the Diffusion of Ideas

Author:
Thomas Risse and Tanja A. Börzel
Publication Date:
05-2009
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Kolleg-Forschergruppe (KFG)
Abstract:
This paper sets out the research agenda of the Kolleg-Forschergruppe “The Transformative Power of Europe. The European Union and the Diffusion of Ideas”. The diffusion of ideas has become a central research theme in political science, sociology, law, history, and economics. In this context, the Kolleg-Forschergruppe focuses on the theoretical and methodological challenges of identifying scope conditions for and interaction effects between the various causal mechanisms by which ideas are spread across time and space. We concentrate on the European Union (EU) as an almost ideal laboratory for investigating processes and outcomes of diffusion. First, European integration itself can be described as an effort to promote the diffusion of ideas across Europe and beyond. Second, European societies and polities emulate each other through mimetic processes. Third, Europe and the EU also serve as active promoters of diffusion processes toward the outside world. Last not least, European integration is embedded in and responds to larger global diffusion processes. The Kolleg-Forschergruppe will explore the diffusion of ideas in three thematic areas: “identity and the public sphere,” “compliance, conditionality, and beyond,” and “comparative regionalism and Europe's external relations”.
Topic:
Economics, Regional Cooperation, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe

34. Der kollektive "Buddenbrooks-Effekt"

Author:
Christoph Deutschmann
Publication Date:
05-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Max Planck Institute for the Study of Societies
Abstract:
The paper views the current financial crisis in light of long-term structural socioeconomic changes in advanced industrial societies. In Western Europe, the United States and Japan, the period of economic prosperity after the Second World War led to a remarkable accumulation of wealth among the middle class that had surprisingly little effect on the substantial fortunes of the wealthiest upper class. This affluence gave rise to pension and investment funds emerging as a new type of collective actor in global financial markets, while the economy was marked by increasing instability, declining growth rates and financial crises. The paper tries to clarify the interconnections between these phenomena using the framework of a multilevel analysis that culminates in a model I call the “collective Buddenbrooks effect” (“Buddenbrooks” being a family saga by Thomas Mann): Structural upward social mobility will lead to an increasing imbalance in capital markets, since the volume of financial assets looking for profitable investment will rise as the social reservoir of solvent debtors and promising investment opportunities decline. Advanced industrial economies are thus characterized by a bias towards capital export and excessive financial liquidity, with the well-known consequences of low economic growth rates and the danger of speculative bubbles on global capital markets. The middle class that originally benefitted from postwar prosperity is negatively affected, too. I argue that the current crisis cannot be understood sufficiently without taking this structural socioeconomic background into account.
Topic:
Economics, International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, Political Economy, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States, Japan, and Europe

35. Women in the European Parliament: effects of the voting system, strategies and political resources. The case of the French delegation.

Author:
Willy Beauvallet and Sébastien Michon
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Political Sociology
Abstract:
This article aims to provide elements to explain the feminisation of French MEPs. While the voting system should be taken into account, its effects can only be understood in relation with two elements: on the one hand, the position of the European Parliament in the French political field; on the other, the specific configuration of social and political struggles of the public space in 1990s France. Within this framework, gender constitutes a political resource that is more valuable in the European Parliament than in the national parliament; as a result, women who are less politically professionalised are promoted. They turn towards forms of parliamentary “goodwill” and strategies of over-involvement in European political roles. The relative specificity of the postures they adopt within the institution does not have to do with a hypothetical “feminine nature”, but with a set of sociopolitical processes.
Topic:
Democratization, Gender Issues, Political Economy, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe and France

36. The ambivalent politicisation of European communication

Author:
Jean-Michel UTARD
Publication Date:
10-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for European Political Sociology
Abstract:
This article analyses the political stakes of the EU's communication policy. The authors study the frictions between European institutions, mainly the Commission and Parliament, after the publication of the White Paper on a European Communication Policy, replacing them in the context of the representations, routines, and compromises that have historically structured the interinstitutional relationships about communication. This historical perspective enables them to show the long lasting and persistent attention of the European actors to the promotion of Europe, as well as the strength of logics of compromise on the politicisation of European communication.
Topic:
Political Economy, Politics, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe

37. Solidarism or Pluralism? Political Ideas of the American Union and the European Union

Author:
Robert Jackson
Publication Date:
02-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre for International Peace and Security Studies
Abstract:
Writing in the late 18th century Edmund Burke characterized the British East India Company as "a state disguised as a merchant." What, in these terms, is the United States? Is it an empire disguised as a republic dis guised as a democracy? What is Canada? Is it an international system disguised as a confederation disguised as a federation? What, finally, is the European Union? It is somewhat ambiguous. But I shall argue that it is an international organization thinly disguised as a political community.
Topic:
International Relations, International Organization, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States, America, and Europe

38. "Transnations" Among "Transnations"? The Debate on Transnational History in the United States and Germany

Author:
Kiran Klaus Patel
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
Comparing the rise of transnational history in the United States and Germany is difficult, mainly because of the many connections between these historiographies. Still, the article argues that the paths into a transnational historiography were quite different on both sides of the Atlantic. Apart from similarities and connections, the text therefore highlights the intellectual as well as institutional differences of the debates in the U.S.A. and Germany.
Topic:
International Relations and Political Theory
Political Geography:
United States, America, Europe, and Germany

39. Markets, Rights and Power: The Rise (and Fall?) of the Anglo-American Vision of World Order, 1975-2005

Author:
James Cronin
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
The so-called “special relationship” has been a fixture of international relations since at least 1940, but it seemed of declining significance during the 1960s and 1970s. It has nevertheless been revived, even refounded, since then; and it has served as the strategic base on which a new Anglo-American vision of the world has been articulated. At the core of the new connection, and the vision to which it gave rise, is a strong preference for the market and a set of foreign and domestic policies that privilege markets and see their expansion as critical to peace, prosperity and the expansion of democracy. This essay examines the origins of this new paradigm as a response to a set of interrelated crises in the 1970s, its elaboration and application during the 1980s under Reagan and Thatcher, its curious history since the end of the Cold War, and the way it evolved into the failed policies of the post-9/11 era.
Topic:
International Relations, Cold War, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
America and Europe

40. Hawk and handsaws: What can France learn from the "Nordic Model"?

Author:
Éloi Laurent and Jean-Paul Fitoussi
Publication Date:
01-2008
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
In this paper, we try to point out some important weaknesses of the contemporary French social-economic model, focusing on relevant elements of comparison with Nordic countries. In doing so, we rely on the idea that large and small countries differ in terms of growth and governance strategies. Hence, while a look at the “Nordic model” can be a good way to reveal of some of France's major problems, it is also an ambiguous template for reform. The paper starts by examining the question of growth strategy (macroeconomic management and structural reforms), then goes on to investigate governance strategy (trust, confidence, governance quality) and finally explores the issues of diversity and integration policy.
Topic:
Economics, Markets, Political Economy, and Political Theory
Political Geography:
Europe