Critique internationale - Content
No Abstract
[What Remains of Neoconservatism?]
After having backed Ronald Reagan in the 1980s, the neoconservatives have exercised considerable influence over G. W. Bush’s administration, especially since the September 11, 2001 attacks and the fight against terrorism. But the difficulties the U.S. has encountered in the Middle East has strongly affected their credibility, even if the charges levied against them are often unfair. Still, their ideas obviously continue to shape American strategic thinking to a large extent, even within the Democratic Party.
[Libya: the conversion of a “terrorist state”]
Libya’s spectacular return to the international scene, confirmed by the U.N.’s lifting of sanctions in September 2003, is rooted in the convergence of security and oil interests. For Libya, economic and political strife have made normalization a necessity. For the United States and the United Kingdom, given the chaos reigning in Iraq, Libya now looks like an Arab country that might offer new perspectives in oil supplies and assurances of security.
[Risks and Limits of a Return to Serbian Nationalism]
Despite the overthrow of Slobodan Milosevic, Serbian nationalism has remained alive and well. Several reasons explain this: first, nationalism has become the ideological matrix of Serbian elites since the demise of communism; second, the state machinery, particularly its security services, have basically remained intact since 2000; moreover, the nationalist vote often translates the financial difficulties of the victims of economic transition; and last, territorial demands, especially in Kosovo, continually reinforce nationalist sentiment. Integrating Serbia into the European Union might help to prevent these excesses.
[Under God and Before the Law? Religious Same-Sex Marriages in the United States]
Religious same-sex marriage in the United States are used in this paper as a way to describe state-church relationships. Same-sex unions are occurring in a context in which the ministers act as “agent of the state” when they perform heterosexual marriages, and in which internal struggles around gay equality within the churches thrive. Here, we borrow a useful typology constructed by P. Ewick and S. Silbey in their book The Common Place of Law to describe religious same-sex marriage, sometimes “before the law,” sometimes “against the law” and sometimes engaged “with the law.”
No Abstract
[Never Again War: the Interparty and Intraparty Politics of Normalization in Germany]
Germany’s reversal of policy in favor of the use of military force for humanitarian purposes is one of the most striking changes in international security policy in the post-Cold War era. The process began sooner than commonly realized. The Christian Democratic government had an explicit strategy to normalize out-of-area operations by gradually accustomizing the public and provoking a constitutional ruling they believe would go in their favor. The reevaluation by the Social Democratic and Green parties appeared to be driven by political expediency, but was a learning process by which they reevaluated their positions in response to events in the Balkans to bring them into line with their broader political ideology. I offer a conceptualization of ideology that explains the link between domestic and foreign policy positions and a theory of learning that explains the transformation of the left. Empirically, the findings question the claim of culturalists that Germany exhibits a unique antimilitarist approach to foreign policy. The antiwar position taken by the red-green coalition in the case of Iraq does not disprove but rather confirms the argument. Germany’s justification of its non-participation was largely devoid of those unique elements of the early 1990s, such as the burdens of history, and more in line with leftist critiques in other countries.
[Instilling the Capitalist Spirit in the Umma: The Creation of an “Islamic Work Ethic” in Indonesia.]
Islamization of the economy has taken on a particular form in Indonesia. By trying to develop an “Islamic work ethic,” intellectuals, ideologues and politicians have set themselves the goal of inculcating the spirit of enterprise in “native” Indonesians in attempt to end the Chinese-Indonesian economic domination and fuel economic development. In recent years this undertaking has been picked up by a new generation of preachers, veritable “faith entrepreneurs” who encourage personal and collective gain. In part heirs to the Anglo-Saxon management trend, now heralds of an Islamic work ethic, they also worthily incarnate the values of the new Indonesian Muslim middle class.
No Abstract
[What Development Tool to Apply to East European Economies?]
Structural funds were designed in the European Union to guarantee the development of so-called lagging economies. The largest of these in terms of its endowment and the scope of its task are the ERDF, European Regional Development Funds. Now to what extent is an instrument of this size relevant when applied to economic and administrative situations having features that differ fundamentally from those for which it was initially designed? Confining the analysis to ERDF alone, this article sets out to isolate the characteristics handed down from the past to better distinguish where these tools can be operational from where they cannot. Such an approach may indicate where convergence might and might not come into play in the EU. It thus helps to understand that what resists application of structural fund tools may be the core of the Soviet legacy and what converges is specifically Europeanization.
[The Integration of Poland in European Transportation Networks]
The transportation sector absorbs one-third of the European aid granted to Poland in the framework of its regional policy for 2004-2006. Given the high growth in the flow of people and goods inherent to enlargement, new infrastructures should enable the country to integrate the internal market and resolve problems of traffic congestion and safety. The territorial impact of structural funds for this program period must not, however, be overestimated. On the other hand, the role that European funds are likely to play in the emergence of a new administrative culture and new land management practices, particularly in transportation policy, is already plain to see.
[The Transfer of Europe’s Employment Strategy to the New Member States]
The difficulties noted in transferring Europe’s employment strategy to eight of the ten states newly admitted to the European Union has to do as much with the historical legacy of these states as with the complexity of European methodology. The conclusion, which tends to be optimistic as regards these states’ potential to learn to implement new European work methods in the field of employment policy, nevertheless questions the validity of a European social model in the context of an enlarged Europe.
[Institutional Twinnings: Limits to a Collective Learning Process]
Now that the first eight countries of Central and Eastern Europe have officially joined the EU, an evaluation of twinnings, an instrument set up by the Commission in 1998 in the framework of the PHARE program, seems timely. We first analyze the workings of this type of instrument and the types of interactions between the various actors involved. We can then show whether or not procedures have been adapted to the objectives of harmonizing the various systems and their convergence, if participants’ needs and expectations have been taken into account, and last, if the process of Europeanization has been successful. All in all, the central issue is one of learning the proper practices, as a process of accompaniment, imitation, adjustment and finally adaptation to the EU’s rules and norms.
Maria Todorova (ed.), Balkan Identities. Nation and Memory, Londres, Hurst and Company, 2004, 374 pages.
Alain Dauvergne, L’Europe en otage ? Histoire secrète de la Convention, Neuilly-sur-Seine, Éditions Saint-Simon, 2004,368 pages.
Peter Norman, The Accidental Constitution : The Story of the European Convention, Bruxelles, EuroComment, 2003,406 pages.
Stephen Ellis et Gerrie ter Haar, Worlds of Power. Religious Thought and Political Practice in Africa, New York, Oxford University Press, 2004, 264 pages.
