Critique internationale - Content
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Robert Skidelsky, John Maynard Keynes trois volumes, Londres, Macmillan
I. Hopes Betrayed : 1883-1920 1983, 447 pages.
II. The Economist as Saviour : 1921-1937 1992, 731 pages.
III. Fighting for Britain : 1937-1946 2000, 580 pages.
Hopkins (A.G.), ed. Globalization in World History, Londres, Random House, 2002, 278 pages.
Jacquet (Pierre), Pisani-Ferry (Jean), Tubiana (Laurence), Gouvernance mondiale. Rapport de synthèse, Paris, La Documentation française, 2002, 505 pages.
Mastnak (Tomaz), Crusading Peace. Christendom, the Muslim World, and Western Political Order ,Berkeley, University of California Press, 2002, 406 pages.
Naylor (R.T.), Wages of crime. Black markets, Illegal Finance and the Underworld Economy. Ithaca et Londres, Cornell University Press, 2002, 336 pages.
Maindo Monga Ngonga (Alphonse), Voter en temps de guerre. Kisangani (RD-Congo), 1997 Paris, L’Harmattan, 2001, 226 pages.
[The color of the dollar. A look at Havana]
In Cuba, where the political leaders base much of their legitimacy on a rhetoric of national sovereignty directed primarily against the United States, the dollar circulates freely and is officially recognized. The authorities made this decision shortly after the serious economic crisis that shook the country as a consequence of the fall of the USSR. But they have managed to control the process through a complex and inventive monetary system using three different currencies: the peso, the convertible peso and the dollar, all protected from one another and in constant contact. In fact, the circulation of the dollar has only partially affected the regime's main egalitarian social choices. However, many believe that the relative but undeniable success of this reaction to the crisis has today reached its limits. Cuban economists remain divided as to what action should be taken to consolidate and expand that achievement.
[What policy toward religious sects? The specificity of France]
It is too often forgotten that in the late 1970s the United States, following a tragic mass suicide and a congressional report on the activities of the Moon Organization, were the first to undertake the fight against sects - followed rather slowly at first by the European countries. The situation is turned around today, but clear differences stand out among EU countries. Although the Church of Scientology's ideology is particularly offensive to Germany, which finds that it smacks of nazism, it is France, as a consequence of the secularity so closely bound up with its political identity, which is in the forefront of the battle against sects. However, an "anti-indoctrination" policy poses fundamental, nearly insoluble problems in a country where religious freedom is a sacrosanct attainment of democracy.
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[The political coming-of-age of India's caste system]
Reverse discrimination measures in favor of the untouchable caste were taken in India as far back as the colonial period, especially in the form of hiring quotas in the public service. They were taken up virtually intact by the leaders of newly independent India without provoking any debate, since the untouchables are situated so low on the social ladder that they do not threaten the elite's privileges. The problem begins with the castes just above: difficulties of definition in a young nation preoccupied by unity and hoping to surpass caste divisions; difficulties of implementation when the castes between the untouchables and the "twice born" make up the majority of the population, and the upper castes, feeling threatened by any measure in favor of these lower castes, put up resistance. After a long standstill, these lower castes mobilized in the 19080s and have formed political parties to defend themselves. Consequently, the law of numbers works in their favor.
[How affirmative action came to South Africa]
Preferential treatment for non-whites entered South Africa through two channels of technical innovation: via legislation, after the ANC leaders had devoted considerable thought in exile in the mid-1980s to the goals of the post-apartheid constitution (affirmative action was deliberately chosen as a highly negotiable system, unlike expropriation and redistribution measures); and via corporate government, when at about the same time pressure increased in favor of an international boycott against the country of apartheid (it was on the basis "good behavior" as regards staff policy, embodied in the respect of the racial equality principles of the "Sullivan Code" that foreign investors long justified their presence in the country, against the opinion of boycott advocates). These two importations prior to the change in regime have gained substance in the new South Africa.
[The end of racial preference in American universities?]
In the 1990s, affirmative action policies in hiring, university admissions and public works contracts were the targets of repeated attacks and were gradually dismantled, at least in part. Using meritocratic arguments and the principle of color-blindness, enemies of these policies turned to the courts or, in certain states, to referenda on popular initiative to do away with these measures. But although court decisions and referendum outcomes usually decided in favor of affirmative action opponents, the Supreme Court has so far carefully avoided having to take a definite stand. Moreover, the major universities have not necessarily discontinued the practice, albeit in concealed forms, of applying a certain degree of racial preference they still believe indispensable.
["There's no race here." The French model against the test of European integration]
If France's Constitution rejects all distinction between citizens on the basis of race, precluding any policy of reverse discrimination, this model has been challenged by the undeniable existence of racist discrimination in the everyday reality of employment, housing, etc. The will to promote the "integration" of citizens of foreign origin who are victims of this discrimination has lead public officials to attempt to devise instruments to measure both the groups affected and discrimination itself, rather unsuccessfully up to now. However, the action of the European Union, which displays a conception very remote from French tradition, influences policy in France, not only directly through directives, but also through a more indirect influence, via its methods and processes.
