Critique internationale - Content
[Migrations and the Disintegration of the Ivory Coast Model: Chronicle of a War Foretold?]
Migrations, internal as well as international, are the foundations of the economic, territorial, social and political systems of the Ivory Coast. Tracing the evolution of these migrations provides a way of understanding the conditions in which the civil war, which has engulfed the country since 1999, first broke out. However the transformations of migratory patterns and practices cannot be considered the direct cause of the conflict. Rather, they are the consequence of the disintegration of what has been known for years as the Ivory Coast model.
[Transatlantic Cooperation after 9/11: “Homeland Security” Issues]
Transatlantic cooperation in the area of “homeland security” stepped up after 9/11. This article examines how the European Union and its member states responded to US demands in this domain. Three areas of US-EU negotiations are analyzed: the transfer of passenger data (PNR) to US authorities, the Container Security Initiative and the issue of machine-readable passports that include biometric data. In most of these domains, the United States managed to take advantage of institutional, intra-European divisions. Yet, a case can be made that there is also a genuine transatlantic convergence at work – as suggested by a comparative examination of the methods used within the frame of antiterrorism and the fight against illegal immigration.
[Belorussia : Presidential Strategies for Personal Domination]
The strategies employed by President Alexandre Loukachenko in establishing his personal power base by accumulating and distributing the country’s political and economic resources can explain the relative stability of the Belorussian regime. In addition to increasing sources of presidential income by instituting a patronage system at every level of the administration, his methods have served to exacerbate rivalries within his entourage. In such a context, no holds are barred: even denouncing corruption can be a means of obtaining further symbolic and material advantages from the president.
[The Political Stakes of Tropical Forests: Liberia and the surrounding region]
In Liberia, and in particular the dense tropical region of the Mano River, geopolitical dynamics and interventionist strategies are inevitably tied to the forest issue. The area provides ample room for tactical manoeuvring and cross-border penetration that are exploited by the various factions attempting to establish territorial control; the rainforest serves as a source of identity and symbolic representation that plays a crucial role in local struggles to legitimate claims. But the timber trade also figures in transnational financial transactions and as such has been subjected to international regulations that have revealed the extent of foreign-power competition for West African resources.
[The Cultural Defence in American Criminal Law]
Feminist legal scholars and political theorists have criticized the use of cultural evidence by immigrant defendants in criminal cases on the grounds that such use can deny equal protection of the laws to immigrant women, but they have neglected a distinct and potentially greater problem: that mainstream legal doctrines which immigrants seek to use are themselves formulated and applied in ways that support gender inequality. Immigrants’ claims of “cultural defence” for actions that harm women seem to be most successful when they resonate with patriarchal norms in the wider society. While the defence in the “marriage by capture” and “wife-murder” cases emphasized cultural differences between immigrants and mainstream Americans, there is a striking congruence in the norms of majority and minority cultures regarding the realm of intimate relations between the sexes: that “no” doesn’t mean no, and that a man’s violent retaliation against his female partner’s infidelity is a “reasonable” response. In these cases, minority practices have found support from certain illiberal mainstream norms expressed in legal doctrine and practice. Thus, if we wish to pursue both greater equality for women and greater equality for cultural minorities, we cannot simply embrace or reject cultural defences; rather, we need to re-evaluate mainstream legal defences alongside minority practices – not only to guard against cross-cultural hypocrisy but to pursue equal justice for all.
[The Paris Consensus: France and the Rules of Global Finance]
This article is about the institutional foundations of the globalization of finance. These institutional foundations are both informal and formal. Until the 1980s the formal rules of the international financial architecture – most consequentially in the European Union (EU), Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), and International Monetary Fund (IMF) – condoned and privileged capital controls. The EU and OECD adopted new rules obliging members to liberalize capital in the late 1980s. During the middle of the 1990s the IMF debated new rules in favor of capital freedom, but the proposal was defeated. Three policy makers in the EU, OECD, and IMF played decisive roles in formulating these new rules in favor of capital freedom: respectively, Jacques Delors, Henri Chavranski, and Michel Camdessus – all three French. This is a paradox because the French had done more than any other country to obstruct the creation of new rules in favor of capital mobility for more than three decades. In this article I offer three narratives of the institutional foundations of capital freedom that constitute this French paradox. Then I offer an explanation for the French paradox based on three ideas: the difference between French rule-based globalization and U.S. ad hoc globalization; the organization building imperatives of each episode for the French, particularly in the EU; and the embrace of the market by the French Left in order to alleviate the undesirable distributional consequences of circumvented financial regulation.
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[The History and Contradictions of State Building]
The past 10 years have witnessed a revival of interest in state building and “international protectorates”. Historical precedents contain important lessons for contemporary practice but today’s state-building engineers are often ill-acquainted with these lessons. Nor are they mindful of the fundamental contradictions that encumber state-building initiatives. The political project of reconstructing collapsed states, it becomes apparent, is not only ideologically freighted; it also ignores what historical sociologists have taught us about the complex processes that govern the construction of states and nations.
[National versus International Legitimacy in State Building Operations]
As illustrated by the example of Bosnia-Herzegovina, the critical relationship on which a state's internal legitimacy is based – i.e. that between political leaders, government officials, and citizens – is not taken into account in the strategies designed by donors and international organizations to assist the process of state-building. As a practical matter, this relationship is seriously considered only to the extent that it is seen to establish international legitimacy. Domestic legitimacy thus remains derivative, secondary to the primary goal of building an internationally acceptable state. As a consequence, it is likely that such states will remain unstable.
[The Dangers of Nation-Building under “Influence”: The Cases of Iraq and Lebanon]
The literature on nation building has, to date, been UN-centric. However, increasingly, regional and global powers step in unilaterally or as part of coalitions to remove authoritarian leaders or end drawn out civil wars. These “interested” powers spearhead nation-building in the transitional period that ensues. While the UN has been criticised for its approach to nation-building, several differences emerge between its style and that of “interested” powers, namely as regards the importance given to the reestablishment of order and security as well as the willingness to use coercion rather than incentives. But is this more muscled style of intervention more likely to succeed? Does it fare better in empowering local societies and allowing them to take control of the nation-building process? The research offers preliminary answers to these questions by comparing Syria’s intervention in the post-civil war nation building in Lebanon and the United State’s current efforts in post-Saddam Iraq.
[Peace Building and State Building in Afghanistan: Constructing Sovereignty for Whose Security?]
The operations called « peace building » or post-conflict » by the United Nations are better conceived of as internationally supported state building. They thus form part of the historical process of formation of an international state system based on the juridical sovereignty of very unequal states. The problems encountered in the Afghanistan recovery, illustrate that the divisions, rivalries, and fragmentation of authority of the “international community” can undermine the goal of state building. Sustainable stability and peace, to say nothing of democracy, require international actors to delegate some sovereign functions to a multilateral entity that can reinforce rather than undermine the institutions of the reconstructed country. The lessons of Afghanistan signal the need for the peace building mechanisms proposed by Secretary-General’s High-level Panel, which would provide a unified decision-making body as a counterpart to the recipient national government and potentially bring order into the anarchy often created by multiple agendas, doctrines, and aid budgets.
Julie Allard et Antoine Garapon, Les juges dans la mondialisation : la nouvelle révolution du droit, Paris, Le Seuil, 2005, 94 pages.
Tarik Dahou, Entre parenté et politique : développement et clientélisme dans le delta du Sénégal, Paris, Karthala / Dakar, Enda Graf Sahel, 2004, 364 pages.
Cécile Leconte, L’Europe face au défi populiste, Paris, PUF, 2005, 250 pages.
Olivier Pétré-Grenouilleau, Les traites négrières : essai d’histoire globale, Paris, Gallimard, 2004, 468 pages.
