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261. Democracy and Military Intervention: Challenges and Opportunities

Author:
Daniel Byman
Publication Date:
02-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies
Abstract:
The Bush administration entered office skeptical of using the U.S. military to build democracy. Condoleezza Rice, President Bush's National Security Advisor, wrote before the election that: "The President must remember that the military is a special instrument. It is lethal, and it is meant to be. It is not a civilian police force. It is not a political referee. And it is most certainly not designed to build a civilian society." Despite this skepticism, policing, building a civilian society, and other tasks inherent to democratization were quickly thrust upon the Bush administration. Even before the fall of the Taliban, the United States and its allies began trying to shape a new government to take power in Kabul. And today, as the United States and its allies move to topple Saddam's regime, they are grappling with how to create a stable and democratic future for Iraq.
Topic:
Security, Government, Peace Studies, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Iraq, Taliban, and Kabul

262. When Will Russia Really Enter Northeast Asia?

Author:
Gilbert Rozman
Publication Date:
08-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Liechtenstein Institute on Self-Determination, Princeton University
Abstract:
Russia needs to open the Russian Far East for regional integration and make use of its dynamism and vast natural resources. Initiatives of the past decade have demonstrated great sensitivity to the dangers of foreign presence, but little forward thinking on their positive contributions. Putin has advanced beyond Yeltsin, but there is still no vision of regionalism. A reorientation of Sino-Russian relations from strategic goals associated with multipolarity to economic cooperation in a multilateral context offers hope that a new approach is coming. Under the umbrella of globalization including closer relations with the U.S., Putin can more easily pursue regional integration as well. In 2002-03, the nuclear standoff between North Korea and the U.S. put regionalism on hold, while energy security achieved a new profile that gave Putin the opportunity to weigh offers from China, Japan, and the U.S., while asserting control over oligarch Mikhail Khodorovsky and his oil behemoth Yukos. Clearly, Putin planned to take firm charge of managing all dimensions of regionalism, but it was less clear if he would encourage market forces.
Topic:
Civil Society and Politics
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, Japan, China, Asia, and North Korea

263. Expanding and Deepening Citizen Participation Process in HUD's CDBG Program

Author:
Marcela Tribble and Terry F. Buss
Publication Date:
12-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The National Academy of Public Administration
Abstract:
Effective citizen participation processes are now regarded as critical in insuring the successful implementation of federal program s in local com m unities. The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development's (HUD) Community Development Block Grant (CDBG) program, a $4.4 billion community/economic development initiative serving more than 1,000 entitlement communities presents an as of yet unrealized opportunity to involve citizens much more in developing, planning, implementing and evaluating local projects. The Secretary of HUD could greatly expand and deepen citizen participation under CDBG by linking merit pay for federal officials to improved citizen participation efforts, providing entitlement com m unities better incentives, funding demonstration projects, and promoting best practices nation-wide; in short, moving citizen participation much higher up on the national agenda.
Topic:
Civil Society, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States

264. Factional Politics and Credit Networks in Revolutionary Vermont

Author:
Henning Hillmann
Publication Date:
01-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for Social and Economic Research and Policy at Columbia University
Abstract:
Studies of state formation tend to emphasize the demise of localism through centralization. This article specifies empirically the social structural conditions that strengthen localism understate formation. The historical case is the creation of Vermont during the Revolutionary War and the local factionalism it involved. Probate records are used to reconstruct credit networks that provided the relational foundation for localism and factional identities. The evidence demonstrates that network segregation between factional regions intensified over time, and was supported by strong cohesion within these regions. Local brokers who forged cohesion within factions consistently attained important political offices while mediators between opposing factions increasingly failed to obtain offices. This structural process coincided with the shift of Vermont's domestic politics into national level conflicts between Federalists and Jeffersonians. Within this escalation local and national factions crystallized around equivalent pairs of binary categorical oppositions. T h e evocation of national politics directly resonated with local lines of conflict, and reinforced factional identities and localism.
Topic:
Government, Human Welfare, Politics, and War
Political Geography:
United States

265. Unbreakable Bond: Serbs and Kosovo

Author:
Vladimir Matic
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Public International Law Policy Group
Abstract:
Nationalism remains a potent force in Serbia, strongly affecting the politicking within the political elite regarding final status issues in Kosovo. The democratic forces are not immune from Kosovo-related nationalism and have at times adopted hardline positions to diminish their vulnerabilities in the political struggle. Since the end of the Kosovo war the West has done nothing to dispel the perception in Belgrade that Serbia's legal claim of sovereignty over Kosovo remains valid in principle and of equivalent standing as an issue “on the table” with Kosovo Albanians' insistence on independence in the prelude to negotiations. Belgrade ignores the fact that, with virtually no Albanians in Kosovo willing to work with them, they have no Albanian partners in pursuing this goal. Kosovo Serbs also display considerable mistrust of Belgrade's concern for their interests. The EU and UNMIK have attempted to create a framework for progress on the issue, but success will hinge on the willingness of the United States to exercise diplomatic leadership to resolve the deadlock.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, and Albania

266. Reversing the Decline in the Balkans: Recommendations for Western Policy

Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Public International Law Policy Group
Abstract:
The results of Serbia's December 2003 parliamentary elections accelerated concerns that the situation in the Balkans is seriously deteriorating. On 2 March 2004 the Public International Law Policy Group and The Century Foundation convened a roundtable of sixteen people deeply involved in Balkan issues from the region, Europe, and the United States to review the general situation in the Balkans and examine the approach of the United States and European Union (EU) to the region.
Topic:
Foreign Policy, Politics, and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, Serbia, and Balkans

267. Serbia After Djindjic: Can Invigorated Reforms Be Sustained?

Author:
Vladimir Matic
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Public International Law Policy Group
Abstract:
The assassinated prime minister of Serbia, Zoran Djindjic, appears to have won in death much of what he could not achieve in life. His concept of Serbia's way out of the domestic political and economic crisis through reform and membership in a democratic Europe has prevailed over one representing the past; Serbia is finally open to cooperation with the world. But the national consensus he was dreaming about does not yet exist. The prevalence and reach of networks of organized crime and corruption limit prospects for significant further structural change and more serious consolidation of the rule of law. The Serbian people have put aside for the moment their infatuation with radical nationalism rather than exorcising it from their society and intellectual culture. The success of such reform as has been implemented is far from secured. For the time being the joint efforts of the leading pro-democratization parties of Serbia and Montenegro have brought about the beginning of long-postponed changes in the army and initiated far-reaching reforms. This allows continuation of reforms in Serbian services and strengthening of the basic institutions of democracy. If continued, expanded and intensified, this course will take both Serbia and Montenegro irrespective of the final destiny of their Union closer to democracy and to the European Union and the United States.
Topic:
Democratization, Government, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Serbia

268. The United States, China, and Taiwan: A Future With Hope

Author:
James Lilley
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Public International Law Policy Group
Abstract:
You have clearly worked over the complicated relationship between Taiwan and China. I can only try to build on what Dr. Lin Chong--pin and Mr. Rostow have already described so lucidly. I would like to point out first that China chooses, for both tactical and emotional reasons, to place a special heavy emphasis on its relationship with Taiwan and to its point that Taiwan is part of China. Emotional, because this stirs up nationalism among a skeptical Chinese elite who have lost ideology. Tactical, because driving home the unity and sovereignty themes forces the U.S. on the defensive, i.e., the U.S. interferes in China's internal affairs, a cardinal sin in China's own lexicon. In reality, however, China has been practical. For almost fifty years Chinese propaganda has focused on Taiwan as a pure target, but objective circumstances have changed and so has China's strategy. China took over the Ta Chen Islands peacefully in 1954, its last significant territorial acquisition in the Taiwan Strait. Its later more militaristic approach against a well--defended Quemoy (Chin men) failed in 1958, and China retreated with much bluster and firing of cannons, many of them empty.
Topic:
Politics and Sovereignty
Political Geography:
United States, China, Taiwan, and Asia

269. Executive Leadership and the Role of “Veto Players” in the United States and Germany

Author:
Ludger Helms
Publication Date:
10-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
Abstract:
In recent comparative works on the constitutional structures of contemporary liberal democracies, the United States and Germany have been grouped together as examples of democratic systems with an exceptionally high degree of “institutional pluralism”. In other typologies both countries have even been classified as “semisovereign democracies”. Whereas such classifications are of some use, especially in the field of public policy research, they fail to pay reasonable attention to the fundamental difference between parliamentary and presidential government that dominated the older literature on comparative political systems. As the comparative assessments offered in this paper suggest, the difference between parliamentary government and presidential government does not only constitute very different conditions of executive leadership in the core executive territory and at the level of executive-legislative relations, but has also a strong impact on the role and performance of the various “veto players” that characterize the political systems of the United States and Germany, and which are at the center of this paper.
Topic:
Government and Politics
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Germany

270. CERI: Latino Power? Political Access for Latinos in the United States

Author:
Emmanuelle Le Texier
Publication Date:
05-2003
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
Abstract:
Since the early nineteen-eighties, the new political visibility of Latinos has been referred to as the awakening of a "sleeping giant." Their increased political expression, be it in the form of protest action during civil rights movements or electoral participation, marks a turning point in the integration of Hispanics in the American public sphere. With a growing number of voters, candidates and elected officials, Latinos have emerged on the political scene. The increasingly influential role of pan-ethnic interest groups and new opportunities for political participation created by the development of transnational networks have contributed to the elaboration of this new participative framework. Yet their electoral and political influence remains below the demographic, economic, social and cultural importance of these some 35 million individuals who make up over 12 percent of the U.S. population. Most of the minority groups still encounter major obstacles to political access. These are partly structural, but also internal to the group: not only is it divided over domestic or foreign issues, it is fragmented by national origin, status and generation. The singular nature of immigration from Latin America, the continuity of migratory flows and their diversity, all constantly rekindle divergences over what strategy Latinos should adopt for participating in the public debate. They also highlight the fictional, both functional and dysfunction, nature of ethnic categorization in the United States. The ethnic card may be an instrument of participation, but it can also prove to seriously fetter minorities' entry into politics.
Topic:
Civil Society, Demographics, Development, and Politics
Political Geography:
United States and America