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282. For our eyes only? Shaping an intelligence community within the EU
- Author:
- Bjorn Muller-Wille
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Union Institute for Security Studies
- Abstract:
- Developing international and cross–agency intelligence cooperation has become imperative in today's security environment. If the so–called 'new threats' are to be tackled collectively, it is not only desirable but also necessary to make collective threat assessments.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
283. Strengthening International Arms Control/Disarmament Regimes and the Democratic Oversight and Reform of the Security Sector
- Author:
- Philipp H. Fluri
- Publication Date:
- 11-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Geneva Centre for Security Sector Governance (DCAF)
- Abstract:
- The effort to universally promote and apply multilateral disarmament and arms control treaties requires public understanding of the contribution of such treaties to international security. All too often specialized knowledge of disarmament, arms control and non-proliferation treaties remains concentrated with the executive and a few specialized departments of the Ministries of Defense or Foreign Affairs: whilst parliamentarians and the public remain largely ignorant about them. However, without either comprehensively informed and committed parliamentary oversight and guidance, or scrutiny by an empowered civil society, arms control and disarmament treaties will neither be sufficiently understood nor successfully implemented.
- Topic:
- Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Civil Society, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
284. Governing the Capital -- Comparing Institutional Reform in Berlin, London, and Paris
- Author:
- Eckhard Schröter and Manfred Röber
- Publication Date:
- 02-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- The paper examines institutional changes in the political and administrative structures governing the cities of Berlin, London and Paris. In doing so, it analyzes the extent to which convergent trends – driven by forces related to increased international competition and European integration – have shaped recent reforms of the governance systems of these European capital cities.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, Politics, and Governance
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Paris, London, and Berlin
285. Copying the Nasdaq Stock Market in Europe: Supranational Politics and the Convergence-Divergence Debate
- Author:
- Elliot Posner
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- Financial arrangements reflect political bargains. Like national labor regimes, the formal and informal rules and relationships governing the allocation of financial resources distinguish one type of capitalist society from another. How firms are financed shapes companies and industries and affects the risks citizens must bear, how they save for retirement, where they work, their job security and ability to buy homes, and the disparity between rich and poor. Leading theories provide increasingly inadequate explanations for changing institutional arrangements in western European finance. They emphasize convergence to global standards and the causal effects of either increased levels of mobile capital or the diffusion of ideas. Or else they describe change within a national trajectory and attribute it primarily to domestic politics, national historical institutions and path dependency. They exclude the possibility of independent regional-level causes. My empirical study of changing financial arrangements for smaller European companies between 1977 and 2003 reveals causes rooted firmly in European Union politics. Neither global forces nor national institutions were primarily responsible for drawing the stock exchanges of Europe into cross-border competition and prompting them to create new US-style markets. Instead, supranational political entrepreneurs, acting with relative autonomy, largely drove this pattern of institutional change. In pushing beyond the international-domestic dichotomy and emphasizing the independent effects of European-level politics, my argument contributes to a growing body of detailed empirical research on the national and global impact of the EU. It also provides more sustained analysis of the causes, mechanisms and effects of adopting US institutional forms outside American borders.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- America and Europe
286. Mothers and Daughters in Transition and Beyond
- Author:
- Emilie L. Bergmann
- Publication Date:
- 03-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute of European Studies
- Abstract:
- With Spain's political changes, including the enfranchisement of women, in the late 1970s, and feminist theories that challenged stereotypical views of motherhood, Spanish women writers began to create more varied depictions. This essay briefly discusses the work of Montserrat Roig, Esther Tusquets, Ana Maria Moix, Nuria Amat, and Maria Mercè Roca, but its focus is on two writers' inscription of motherhood in terms of autonomy and mutual dependency: Carmen Martín Gaite's creation of maternal 'interlocutors,' and Soledad Puértolas's memoir, Con mi madre (2001) in which she writes with extraordinary honesty of the closeness and the silences she shared with her mother.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Gender Issues, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Spain
287. Islamism in North Africa I: The Legacies of History
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- Islamism, terrorism, reform: the triangle formed by these three concepts and the complex and changeable realities to which they refer is at the centre of political debate in and about North Africa today. The role of Egyptian elements in the leadership of Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda organisation is well-known, if not necessarily well understood. The involvement of Maghrebis in terrorist networks in Europe -- whether linked to al-Qaeda or not -- has recently been underlined by the suspected involvement of Moroccans in the 11 March 2004 attack in Madrid. Egypt itself has endured years of terrorist violence; few if any countries have suffered as much from terrorism as Algeria has over the last twelve years; and the bombings in Casablanca on 16 May 2003 suggest that Morocco is not immune.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Politics, Religion, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Africa, Europe, Algeria, North Africa, Egypt, and Morocco
288. Monitoring the Northern Ireland Ceasefires: Lessons from the Balkans
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- International Crisis Group
- Abstract:
- This briefing compares the mandate of the Independent Monitoring Commission for Northern Ireland (IMC) with those of two recent European examples of the monitoring and enforcement of compliance with peace agreements: the unsuccessful Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) of 1998-1999, and the much more fruitful mission of the Office of the High Representative (OHR) in Bosnia and Herzegovina since 1995. It attempts to identify lessons from those earlier experiences that may help the IMC carry out its mission in the context of carrying forward the Good Friday peace process.
- Topic:
- Government and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Bosnia, Herzegovina, Kosovo, and North Ireland
289. Danish and British Euroscepticism Compared: A Sceptical Assessment of the Concept
- Author:
- Catharina Sørense
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The aim of the working paper is to examine similarities and differences between Danish and British sceptical or negative public attitudes towards the European Union. It looks at problems involved with defining and measuring the phenomenon of popular euroscepticism, before turning to characteristics specific for the case countries. The conclusion drawn from the comparison is that the phenomenon differs significantly even between two countries often associated for a discernible euroscepticism. In conclusion, the contemporary relevance of the study of popular euroscepticism is discussed with reference to the increasing use of referenda as a means to settle political questions in today's EU.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
290. Russian Conservatism in the Putin Presidency
- Author:
- Sergei Prozorov
- Publication Date:
- 10-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- The article seeks to map the emergent discursive field of conservatism in Russian politics in the context of the reshapement of the political space in the Putin presidency. In the course of Putin's first presidential term 'conservatism' became a privileged mode of political selfidentification in the Russian discourse, functioning as the nodal point of the hegemonic project of the Presidency. Yet, in accordance with the Foucauldian understanding of discourse as a system of dispersion, the article demonstrates the way the conservative discourse is internally fractured into two antagonistic strands, identified by their practitioners as liberal and left conservatisms. While the liberal-conservative orientation supports and sustains the depoliticising project of the Putin presidency, which orders and stabilises the effects of the anti-communist revolution, left conservatism functions in the modality of radical opposition to the Putinian hegemony, thereby contributing to the pluralisation of political space in contemporary Russia. In the present Russian political constellation 'conservatism' is therefore less a name for a stable hegemonic configuration than a designator of the field of political struggle over the very identity of postcommunist Russia. The article concludes with a critical discussion of the relation the two strands of Russian conservatism establish to the period of the 1990s as the 'moment of the political' in the Russian postcommunist transformation.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Government, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia