Critique internationale - Content
[After the Fortuyn and Van Gogh murders: Is the Dutch integration model in disarray ?]
The Netherlands used to have an international reputation of a tolerant country and within Europe a guide country for progressive integration policies for newcomers. The political landslide victory of the party of Pim Fortuyn and his assassination in 2002, and the subsequent murder of Theo van Gogh in 2004 seem to have radically altered that traditional image. This article analyses the background of these changes: tracing them back to the Ethnic Minorities Policy established and implemented in the de-politicised context of the 1980s. It then outlines the gradual changes towards more `Republican' integration policies in the 1990s and finally describes the extreme politicization of immigration and integration policies since 2000. Dutch society's obsession, at least in the public debate and political and policymaking choices at the national level, has had such far reaching negative effects that counterforces, particularly at the local level and in civil society, will likely be able to turn the tide towards more balance in the near future
[Germany’s Delay in Transposing the European Directive against Racism]
Germany is one of those rare countries that has taken more than five years to transpose into their national law the measures against ethnic discrimination requested by the European Union directive against racism. Why precisely did the red and green federal government have such difficulties in transposing this directive? It appears that the repeated attempts by government parties have come up against opposition by Christian-democrats and representatives of the business sphere. The modalities of the transposition process I study in this paper confirm the conclusions of a previous research program identifying, within EU-15 countries, three worlds or groups of countries each having its own type of transposition: the “legalist world”, the “world of negligence”, and the “world of the national policy”, to which, precisely, Germany belongs t
[From Moubarak to Moubarak: the 2005 Presidential Election]
The first Egyptian presidential election contest occurred in September 2005. President Moubarak, seeking a fifth term, won the elections. The results were no surprise, considering the constitutional and judicial precautions framing these elections. In fact, the close links between the governing party and the State apparatus, guaranteeing the perpetuation of the majority, remain unchanged. But by taking the initiative of a constitutional amendment providing for a presidential election – in a country where referendums had been the rule for choosing presidents – the regime will have to face the new constraints that presidential elections impose: respect for the rules of the game defined by the regime itself and the political mobilizations denouncing the infringements of these rules, or even their content. What impact do the September 2005 electoral results have on the redefinition of the presidential question? How can one describe those candidates competing against President Moubarak? What kind of image of the President did this campaign give, though it was meant to promote him? And lastly, which were the mobilizations of an opposition which, even if it did not attain its objectives, experienced new forms of contestation?
[« Loser Pays » European Law of State aid as punitive code]
For reasons going far beyond economic analysis, European law on competition loathes state aid to companies in difficulty. A case study on the rescue of the Credit Lyonnais reveals the principle: the Commission criticises the fact that because companies know they can benefit from state aid, they take rash risks without assuming the consequences. State assistance is blameworthy insofar as it goes against the “moral rule of the market” according to which bankruptcy is the normal sanction of poor management. Therefore, the Commission stigmatizes less the distortions to competition generated by state aid than what is viewed as far more reprehensible forms of distortion: market ethics and the natural business life and death. The considerable guarantees the Commission requests before it authorizes aid can be seen as a sort of punishment substituted for the pains of bankruptcy or restructuring that the company “normally” would have had to face.
[The pretences of the Vietnamese Criminal Law Reform]
The Vietnamese criminal law reform launched in the early 1980’s has not led, contrary to appearances, to the depoliticization of penal practice and of crime qualification. The legal mechanisms of social control have not replaced the preexistent disciplinary ones, but have been overlaid on them. Our argument hinges on three developments. First, the criminal law codification, the rationalization of the judiciary organization and the reinforcement of legality control point toward the end of anomy of the revolutionary period and, to some extent, of “rule by morality”. They establish a “rule by law”, but not a “rule of law” for the reinforcement of legality has only aimed at strengthening social control, at defining the impact of economic reforms and at providing the regime with a new source of legitimacy, of the legal-rational kind. Secondly, the depoliticization of incrimination in the 1999 Criminal Code is only superficial: the mark of socialist law theories, of revolutionary justice and of custom law on the definition of penal responsibility, the qualification of crime and its organization into a hierarchy remains apparent. Finally, the economy of punishment remains unchanged: it is based on repression, exemplarity and reeducation and it still proceeds from socialist theories of social hygiene and from some Vietnamese popular beliefs.
No Abstract
[Patrimonialization of Parliamentary Responsibilities in Japan]
The issue of « patrimonialization of Parliamentary office » is at the core of the reflection on the mode of production and reproduction of Japanese political elites since the 1990s. Though the phenomenon may be relatively old, the increase of power of “hereditary members of parliament”, both in the Diet and government, is often presented as one of the major elements of the Japanese political system and is largely criticized in the national media as a proof that the mode of formation of the political class is both archaic and hermetic. What reasons can explain among the political culture, the voting system and the electoral behaviours, the space occupied in the corridors of power by “heirs”, and singularly big parliamentary dynasties? This paper questions the electoral results of hereditary members of Parliament, and analyzes the typological evolutions of their family and socio-professional backgrounds from a diachronic point of view. It also assesses the complexity of their political role, considering that they are both factors of stabilization for the conservative elites in a context of greater volatility of electoral attitudes, and specific but essential elements of political stimulation. Hereditary members of parliament are indeed the only ones to possess political and financial resources as well as a network of contacts that enable them to engage structural reforms without having to pay the electoral price. More than just a conventional image, there is a complex configuration: if these members of Parliament are numerous enough to offer a diversification of the political class excessively described as being dominated by the bureaucratic apparatus, they are not enough to be able to escape from the tacit rules of political promotion. But if they participate, in a way, to the consolidation of elites in power, the forces that sporadically have made things change in the Japanese political system came from their ranks.
[India: Dynastic Democracy or Lineage Democracy?]
In India, the hereditary nature of political functions is a tradition dating back to the beginning of the Republic. The princes who entered the electoral arena after 1947 were the first to observe a practice well in accordance with their ancestors’ dynastical logic. These heirs were nevertheless dismissed from the political game when they demonstrateda lack of any political devotion to the state. Such a rule is perfectly well illustrated by the Scindia lineage who recently inaugurated its third generation of members of parliament. The Nehru/Gandhi family incarnates the resonance of the dynastical repertory in the Indian policy in a more continuous way. But then again, nothing is automatic in the perpetuation of generations in power, either because the heirs are rejected by the electorate or they do not wish pursue their ancestors’ activity. All in all, Indian politics seems to reflect a logic of lineage rather than dynasty, even if the modes of succession at the head of certain regional political parties has apparently been challenging such a model in recent years.
[Bi-Polarity and Inheritance Practices in the Sri-Lankan Democracy]
The particularity of Sri Lanka is to associate family inheritance practices (established in 1952, four years after Independence) with a system of democratic changeover between two parties – UNP and SLFP – whose leaders were members, at least until 2005, of two family lines, respectively the Senanayake and the Bandaranaïke. For the latter, women have taken the succession – the founder’s widow and later his daughter– through a process somewhat akin to that in Bangladesh. Though the country has been facing severe crises since the 1970s – repeated rebellions by the JVP, a Singhalese guevarian organization, and later the armed separatist movement controlled by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) -, these seem not to have fundamentally affected the inheritance mechanisms, which can be interpreted as long-term structural elements
[ The South-Korean Democracy, or the Absence of Dynastic Rationales ?]
Though the young South Korean democracy started in 1987, democratic political practices only appeared in the 1990s. Due to recurring political instability in the country during the 20th Century and the newness of the transition to democracy, the patrimonalization of elected political office is far from being obvious even if the traditional political culture rather favours it. Thanks to democratization, various movements of the civil society appeared in the 1990s, and one of the most striking changes (sometimes qualified as “civic political revolution”) of the two first legislative elections of the 2000s was their “black lists” spread on the Internet in order to block those candidates who were deemed not democratic enough. Though such actions have not yet fostered the patrimonalization of political office, they do not thwart it either. The entry of women into politics in the 1990s might mean the start of intra-family-like transmission of political duties, though remains to be confirmed. Given the stabilization of the democratic game, it is conceivable that family transmission strategies founded on political professionalism may be put into practice for the next generation
L’historiographie est une anthropologie À propos de trois livres de François Hartog
Luc Boltanski, La condition fœtale : une sociologie de l’engendrement et de l’avortement, Paris, Gallimard, 2004, 420 pages.
Kwame Anthony Appiah, The Ethics of Identity, Princeton / Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2005, 358 pages
