Anne de Tinguy (dir.)
Looking into Eurasia : the year in politics provides some keys to understand the events and phenomena that have left their imprint on a region that has undergone major mutation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991: the post-soviet space. With a cross-cutting approach that is no way claims to be exhaustive, this study seeks to identify the key drivers, the regional dynamics and the underlying issues at stak. This volume is devoted to the war in Ukraine
Anne de Tinguy (dir)
Looking into Eurasia : the year in politics provides some keys to understand the events and phenomena that have left their imprint on a region that has undergone major mutation since the fall of the Soviet Union in 1991: the post-soviet space. With a cross-cutting approach that is no way claims to be exhaustive, this study seeks to identify the key drivers, the regional dynamics and the underlying issues at stak. This volume is devoted to the war in Ukraine
François Vergniolle de Chantal
The US Congres is the most powerful legislative in the world. Its independence and its powers make it impossible for the presidency to be truly imperial. The Senate is especially influential since it allows its members to use a series of minority procedures, such as the filibuster, that exert a constant a priori pressure on the Executive. This institutional configuration is made extremely costly by the current partisan polarization. It is also, however, a functional equivalent to the theoretical parliamentary right of life and death on Executive powers.
François Damerval
Kari De Pryck
Mathilde Mathieu, Olivier Sartr, Thomas Spencer
François Gemenne
Jean-Philippe Béja
Jasmine Zérinini-Brotel
Bruno Tertrais
Amandine Barb
Audrey Célestine
Alix Meyer
Rick "Ozzie" Nelson
During the Cold War the US-Pakistan relationship was one in which the US considered Pakistan as a necessary part of its effort to contain communism in Asia while Pakistan considered its relationship with the US as strengthening its position vis a vis India. The high point in this relationship was during the Soviet-Afghan war. The US tried to renew this relationship after 9/11, although when Obama replaced GW Bush he stated his intention to move US-Pakistani relations off the security agenda which the Pentagone and the Pakistani army considered a priority. However, Obama rain into resistance from the Pakistani army and from the national security establishment in Washington- as can be seen from the security-oriented distribution of US aid. But not even in the area of security have the two nations been able truly to collaborate. To begin with, the strengthening of US-India relations angered Pakistan. Then Islamabad protected the Taliban in its fight with NATO. Finally, Obama violated Pakistani sovereignty (the Drone strikes in the tribal belt and the Ben Laden raid). These conflicting interest, however, do not necessary means the end of the relationship.
Michèle Lamont
Anthony Amicelle
The present paper examines current dynamics of surveillance regarding the fight against “terrorism” and its financing. Close analysis of the so-called “SWIFT Affair” and the US terrorist finance tracking program draw attention to one specific case-study which allows us to question the contemporary politics of massively accessing commercial data-banks for intelligence purposes. With reference to the SWIFT affair, the paper explores a sensitive aspect of transatlantic cooperation in the field of counter-terrorism
George Perkovich
Dr. Vladimir A. ORLOV
What kind of future worlds do experts of international security envision? This paper studies the role of experts in DC's think tanks, a relatively small world socially and culturally highly homogeneous. It underlines the characteristics of this epistemic community that influence the way its analysts make claims about the future for security. The DC's marketplace of the future lacks diversity. The paradigms analysts use when they study international politics are very similar. Moreover, the range of issues they focus on is also relatively narrow.
The paper highlights three main features of the relation between those who make claims about the future of security and those to whom these claims are addressed (mainly policymakers). First, it shows that, for epistemic but also for political reasons, the future imagined in think tanks is relatively stable and linear. This future also contributes to the continuity of political decisions. Second, the paper shows that think tanks are also "victims of groupthink", especially when they make claims about the future. Third, it underlines a paradox: scenarios and predictions create surprises. Claims about the future have a strong tunneling effect. They reinforce preexisting beliefs, create focal points, and operate as blinders when, inevitably, the future breaks away from its linear path.
Anne Daguerre
The social policy of the US welfare state is based on a liberal model of social protection. The social contract is based on the idea that individuals of working age individuals should support themselves and their dependants thanks to their earned income. However, to have a job is no longer sufficient in protecting individuals against main social risks. President Obama has been elected on the promise that he will restore the American dream, whereby individual work is rewarded by upward social mobility. However, the Obama administration faces the challenge of rising social inequality and poverty, in an extremely difficult economic context. The Great Recession has laid bare the gaps of the safety net: a growing proportion of families must choose between paying for food or rent. To understand the inadequacies of the US social protection system, it is necessary to study the structure of public assistance programmes, as well as labour market trends and the impact of the recession on low-income households. This analysis will shed light on the main characteristics of the Obama administration’s response to the economic crisis.
Pierre-Arnaud Chouvy
François Vergniolle de Chantal
Antoine Vion, François-Xavier Dudouet, Eric Grémont
The study proposes analyzing the complex links between the standardization and regulation of mobile phone markets from a political economy perspective. Moreover, this study examines these links by taking into consideration, from a Schumpeterian perspective, the market disequilibrium and the monopolistic phenomena associated with innovation. It aims firstly to underline, with respect to different network generations (0G to 4G), the particularity of this industry in terms of investment return, and the key role that network standardization plays in the structuring of the market. This key variable of the standard explains in large part the income that GSM represented in the industrial and financial dynamics of the sector. The study thus explores the relations between the normalization policies, which are certainly neither the sole issue of public actors nor are they simple industrial property regulations, and the regulation policies of the sector (allocation of licenses, trade regulations, etc.). It underlines that the last twenty-five years have made the configurations of expertise more and more complex, and have increased the interdependency between network entrepreneurs, normalizers, and regulators. From a perspective close to Fligstein’s, which emphasizes the different institutional dimensions of market structuring (trade policies, industrial property regulations, wage relations, financial institutions), this study focuses on the interdependent relations between diverse, heavily institutionalized spheres of activity.
François Vergniolle de Chantal
The Republican Party’s identity as fashioned since 1964 is poles apart from the moderate conservatism that had characterised the party until then. The party ideology has become populist, religious and nationalistic. It results from Barry M. Goldwater and later Richard Nixon’s "southern" electoral strategy. The party cashed in on the discontent sown among the southern population by racial integration, and has consequently made the former Confederate States its stronghold. This shift has been so large in scope that it constitutes the main feature of US politics in the past four decades. Political initiative has since then been primarily rightwing, weakening the Democrats. When the GOP won a majority in the South, the Democratic coalition suffered a trauma it has yet to recover from. The nationalist reaction to the 9/11 attacks gave the Republicans a supplementary political base. Nevertheless, this comeback does not have sufficiently stable elements allowing for a lasting Republican coalition. The Republicans’ strength resides in the fervour that surrounds them, as well as, as we will argue, in the Democrats’ inability to define a tactic to face the Republican challenge. Yet, the balance of (electoral) power does not tip to the Republicans. Although demographical and geographical factors favour the right, social evolutions tend to favour the Democrats. The latter may lack strategy, but they do not lack resource. The situation is exactly the opposite for the Republicans.
Emmanuelle Le Texier
Since the early nineteen-eighties, the new political visibility of Latinos has been referred to as the awakening of a “sleeping giant.” Their increased political expression, be it in the form of protest action during civil rights movements or electoral participation, marks a turning point in the integration of Hispanics in the American public sphere. With a growing number of voters, candidates and elected officials, Latinos have emerged on the political scene. The increasingly influential role of pan-ethnic interest groups and new opportunities for political participation created by the development of transnational networks have contributed to the elaboration of this new participative framework. Yet their electoral and political influence remains below the demographic, economic, social and cultural importance of these some 35 million individuals who make up over 12 percent of the U.S. population. Most of the minority groups still encounter major obstacles to political access. These are partly structural, but also internal to the group: not only is it divided over domestic or foreign issues, it is fragmented by national origin, status and generation. The singular nature of immigration from Latin America, the continuity of migratory flows and their diversity, all constantly rekindle divergences over what strategy Latinos should adopt for participating in the public debate. They also highlight the fictional, both functional and dysfunction, nature of ethnic categorization in the United States. The ethnic card may be an instrument of participation, but it can also prove to seriously fetter minorities’ entry into politics.
Marc Parant
Christian Girault
Eric Fassin
Eric Anglès, Chris Hensley et Denis-Constant Martin
During the 70s three somewhat extraordinary phenomena occurred at the same time in Jamaica: the rise of rastafarianism, a syncretic sect, the establishment of reggae as a new style of popular music and the emergence of a political movement headed by one of the two strongest parties on the island, the People's National Party. While these three movements expressed themselves in different ways - and were never exclusively linked - they together came to represent an intense aspiration for change whether it be cultural, social, economic or political.Today Jamaicans have a different attitude to their history: for many dignity and pride have replaced a sense of alienation and self denigration. Yet the political system has not changed and the same social inequalities persist as twenty five years ago. Jamaica still wonders what its future could be. These collected papers analyze the factors that enabled the coming together of rastafarianism, reggae and political forces within Jamaica and examine recent developments in popular music in an attempt to better understand the extent of social transformation within Jamaica.
Zaki Laïdi
The widely held perception of a growing gap between the US significant political resources (enhanced even further by the collapse of the Soviet Union) and its economic weakening brings up the question of the nature of American power. Did it or did it not change, particularly since 1985, from a hegemonic power, that is a power able to make economic and financial sacrifices in favor of privileged allies, to a predator one, that is an actor maximizing its political resources to have others partially pay for its economic decline? Examining that question essentially from an economic perspective, looking closely at the relations between the US and the newly industrialized countries in Asia and Latin America, Zaki Laïdi concludes that the US, in spite of a much stronger willingness to utilize its power, cannot be defined as a "predator".
