Critique internationale - Content
[Dayton, ten years after: erroneous appraisals ?]
Much scholarship on postwar Bosnia uses the Dayton accords as a yardstick by which to measure the social and political transformations that have occurred over the past ten years. In so doing, such research remains trapped by the political vocabulary and agenda of the “international community,” leaving outside the field of analysis such significant phenomena as the changes in social identities that grew out of the war or new clientelistic modes of allocating resources. Only by taking into account these complex factors can we understand the state of contemporary Bosnian society and the true impact of international action, and hence examine the conditions in which a shared political community in Bosnia-Herzegovina is emerging today.
[Iraqi Kurdistan today]
While bearing in mind the evolution of Iraq as an entity experiencing rapid ethnicization of the inter-sectarian relations, this article presents the new contours of the Kurdish issue in this country. Kurdistan is less affected by violence than the rest of Iraq. A political power is also being constructed there that enjoys most of the prerogatives of a state and is thus becoming a reference for the whole Kurdish space in the Middle East. As the Kurds become a federative component of the country, the interpretation of the “national past” grows more complex, or even painful. Although the past combats against Baghdad constitute part of the nationalist legacy, the trauma of the inter-Kurdish civil war (1994-1996) is constantly used to remind the Kurds that a “fratricidal war” is above all a “war of self-destruction.”
[Russia and the Kyoto Protocol: a misleading ratification]
After the withdrawal of the US from the Kyoto Protocol in 2001, the fate of the treaty was entirely in the hands of the Russian Federation. Russia used its pivotal position as a tool for seeking political advantage and tangible incentives. This paper examines the internal forces in Russia both for and against ratification and presents some key players in the controversy. Now, with the entry into force of the Kyoto Protocol, it has become clear that Russia will fulfil its commitments in terms of stabilization of the level of emissions at no cost, that Russia has no public energy policy to address climate change and that Russia is not ready to take advantage of its involvement in the global regime. This is mainly due to the lack of a legal institutional framework for domestic implementation of the treaty. In the Russian context, these difficulties are related to the struggle for control over the energy sector and to the competition for the control over natural resources between the federal authorities and the elites in the regions.
[What Demographic Policies for China?]
China is the largest demographic power in the world. Population control, whether it is a matter of growth, distribution throughout the country or its mobility, has thus been a major issue there since the 1950s and has been the object of various authoritarian policies aimed at serving interests that are as much economic as political and strategic. Since the creation of the People’s Republic in 1949, two distinct phases have left their imprint on the country: first, “hardcore” socialism under Mao Zedong until the late 1970s, then economic liberalism with the reforms Deng Xiaoping launched in 1978. Despite this about-face related to remodeling the economic system, the underlying aims of these population policies maintained a certain continuity. Among those that have left the most visible traces on China’s demographic landscape: mobility control, which long allowed it to contain urban development; its rebalancing of regional development, which is part of its aim to unify the country; and last, the birth control policy, at the root of an accelerated demographic transition. This article sets out to examine the context in which such policies were implemented and how they may have changed over the past decades.
[Hong Kong, China and Democracy]
Analysing political changes in Hong Kong since the SARS crisis of 2003, this paper argues that a threefold transition process where political, economic and cultural factors reinforce each other, led to a governance crisis in the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region, severely undermining the position of the executive and leading to the replacement of the Chief Executive in July 2005. On one hand, political mobilisation increased in recent years, both in terms of electoral turnout and protest behaviour. On the other, the subsequent legislative elections in September 2004 revealed a clear popular disenchantment with political party organizations. Support for pro-democracy organisations also became more diffuse and somewhat critical toward the Democratic Party. Hong Kong’s transitional crisis is further complicated by tensions between the different constitutional cultures found in Hong Kong and the PRC. Hong Kong is having to find a way of legitimately resisting China’s political and legal encroachments without provoking mainland suspicions of “anti patriotism".
[Regulatory Competition against Public Health? The Building of a European Medicines Regulation]
The emergence of a European political space in the pharmaceutical sector has created competition between regulatory agencies. But regulatory competition has long been recognized as a potential downward pressure on regulation standards. As a consequence, this article discusses the hypothesis of a “race to the bottom” in the sanitary control of medicines in Europe. After describing the growing rivalry between sanitary authorities in Europe since the 1960s, the author identifies several threats it represents for public health care. He nevertheless states that regulatory competition has not led to a weakening of public controls. In fact, the economic aspect of regulatory competition should not be overestimated: the European medicines regulatory system implies confrontation between experts that reinforces public supervision and, in this field, cooperation and normalization have always framed the dynamics of competition.
No Abstract
[The United Kingdom and the European Constitutional Treaty]
UK action with respect to the Constitutional Treaty is instructive and paradoxical. Regarding the former, the way in which its preferences were formulated challenge the contentions of liberal intergovernmentalism, the main theoretical approach in the field. With respect to the latter, New Labour adopted a positive and constructive approach that distinguished its conduct from that of previous governments, but its failure to engage domestic public opinion undermined its achievement of a 'British Constitution' and, though saved from holding the referendum that it had promised, the government succeeded only in alienating its European partners abroad and allowing Europsceptics to win the debate by default at home.
[France and the European Constitution: A Legacy Disowned]
This article sheds light on the institutional factors weighing in how French preferences were determined as regards the future of Europe. The French government was obliged to take into account the reformulation of the debate at the Convention and the European Institutional legacy. This institutional rationale took precedence over the French leaders’ ambitions for national power, considerations with regard to the effectiveness of the decision-making process and there vision of Europe. It later crippled the debate over the referendum, for responsibility for it was never assumed in positive terms
[Italy, the Constitutional Convention, and Its Aftermath]
Italy’s constitutional preferences at the European Convention were not distinct from those that eventually emerged in the draft document, at least as regards the most important constitutional features. This despite early suggestions that the Berlusconi government had moved away from traditional Italian preferences for federal solutions and stronger central institutions. However, in the aftermath of the Convention, particularly in the light of domestic coalition tensions and difficult economic and budgetary problems, it appears that a form of Euroscepticism is reappearing within the government. Currently this is focused mainly on the role of the European Commission, but in future it may be expected to spread to other institutional issues, particularly if European integration were to become, for the first time in postwar Italy, disputed electoral territory between the parties.
[The European Commission and the Debate on the Future of Europe]
This article examines the Commission’s preferences and preference formation in relation to the Convention and the negotiation of the Constitutional Treaty. Opposing rational choice accounts, which explain Commission action in terms of the tendency of bureaucratic actors to seek to maximise power, status and opportunities, it argues that the Commission is best seen as an internally differentiated arena, from which preferences emerge as a result of complex interactions that entail the use of power, institutionalised myths and routines. It contends, moreover, that, in contrast to earlier rounds of treaty reform, the Commission was an ineffective performer in the debate on the future of Europe. As well as committing tactical and strategic mistakes, the Commission was disadvantaged by the explicitly political nature of the exercise and the opportunity structure of the Convention compared to previous IGCs.
Isam al-Khafaji, Tormented Births : Passages to Modernity in Europe and the Middle East, Londres, I. B. Tauris, 2004, 389 pages.
John R. Bowen, Islam, Law, and Equality in Indonesia An Anthropology of Public Reasoning, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 2003, 289 pages.
Yves Buchet de Neuilly, L’Europe de la politique étrangère, Paris, Économica, 2005, 256 pages
Aminata Traoré, Lettre au Président des Français à propos de la Côte d’Ivoire et de l’Afrique en général, Paris, Fayard, 2005, 185 pages.
