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1982. The mysteries of Vietnamese "socialist democracy". Evolution of the people's assemblies and of the legal system since the launch of the Dôi moi
- Author:
- Matthieu Salomon
- Publication Date:
- 05-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
- Abstract:
- Since the 1980s – and, more symbolically, since the 6th Communist party Congress - Vietnam has been engaged in reform, which is referred to as "dôi moi", i.e. renewal. While their aim is, first and foremost, to change the rules governing economic activity, these reforms have, since the 1990s, also been associated with political, institutional and legal change. Influenced, on the one hand, by endogenous constraints arising out of the necessary adaptation of the politico-legal environment and of the evolution of the power-legitimation processes and, on the other hand, by exogenous constraints born of the desire for integration into the international community and economy, the discourse of the Vietnamese authorities and the country's fundamental political texts have both been modified. It seems undeniable that, despite its weightiness and areas of permanence, the Vietnamese politico-legal system is, de facto, slowly evolving and becoming "normalised". The intention here is not to suggest that Vietnam is undergoing a "democratic transition" bringing it closer to a western model of reference. The aim of the regime may be defined thus: "to consolidate the single-party system while satisfying the demands for modernisation". By means of an analysis of the system of people's assemblies elected by the population and of the legal - i.e. juridical and judicial - system, this study attempts to provide an insight into the regime's capacity for politico-legal innovation and, notably, into its capacity to structure new arenas for debate. It examines the complex evolutions which have affected the rules and players of this too-often-neglected aspect of a changing Vietnam.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Southeast Asia
1983. CERI: The socio-political effects of forced migrations linked tomajor hydraulic projects in China. The example of the Three Gorges dam.
- Author:
- Florence Padovani
- Publication Date:
- 04-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
- Abstract:
- The study of the population movements caused by the major Chinese hydraulic projects reveals the true extent of the change which has come about in relations between the State and society in China. The construction of the Three Gorges dam-which led to considerable controversy both within China and beyond - is a prime case in point.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- China and Asia
1984. CERI: Religion and Politics in Greece: The Greek Church's 'Conservative Modernization' in the 1990s
- Author:
- Anastassios Anastassiadis
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales
- Abstract:
- This article addresses the sensitive question of Church-State relations in Greece. Recent studies have suggested that the Greek Church's discourse was plainly incompatible with modern conceptions of liberal democracy. Populism and nationalism have been the two theoretical concepts used in relation with the Church. Discourse analysis based on public declarations of Church officials has been the main methodological tool. The Greek identity cards' crisis of the nineties has been its testing ground. Through an analysis of this "crisis" this article intends to show that these methods can offer only very limited perspectives of understanding the process for two main reasons. First, they show little interest for sociological analysis and especially for the internal functioning of the Church. Second, discourses are one outcome of the actors' strategies but have to be deciphered and not taken for granted. Analysts disregard one of the main presuppositions of semantics theory: discourses are produced within a specific socio-historical context and according to certain prefabricated schemes. This dual pattern of production allows for continuity as well as for change. Thus, this article also argues that a Church's conservative discourse may be closely related to the efforts of certain actors within this institution to renovate it. While refuting the "clash of civilizations" thesis, this article finally intends to suggest that the renewed interest for religion in general and orthodoxy in particular due to this thesis should be put to use by researchers in order to acquire new and more comprehensive socio-historical accounts of the Greek Church.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, and Religion
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Greece
1985. Providing Security for People: Enhancing Security through Police, Justice, and Intelligence Reform in Africa
- Author:
- Jeffrey O. Isima and Chris Ferguson
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform
- Abstract:
- Security Sector Reform has continued to emerge as a powerful organising force among international actors dedicated to conflict prevention and poverty reduction. As the broader strands of the SSR concept are becoming increasingly recognisable and understood it will be important to emphasise that effective SSR implementation requires a balanced approach across the whole security sector.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, and Human Rights
- Political Geography:
- Africa
1986. Providing Security for People: Enhancing Security through Police, Justice, and Intelligence Reform in Africa
- Author:
- Chris Ferguson and Jeffrey O. Iisma
- Publication Date:
- 09-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform
- Abstract:
- Security Sector Reform has continued to emerge as a powerful organising force among international actors dedicated to conflict prevention and poverty reduction. As the broader strands of the SSR concept are becoming increasingly recognisable and understood it will be important to emphasise that effective SSR implementation requires a balanced approach across the whole security sector.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, and Peace Studies
- Political Geography:
- Africa
1987. Security And Development: Assessing International Policy And Practice Since The 1990s (GFN-SSR Report of the Conference)
- Author:
- Ann M. Fitz-Gerald
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform
- Abstract:
- This conference launches IPA's new research program entitled 'Strengthening the Security-Development Nexus: Conflict, Peace and Development in the 21st Century'. Focusing primarily on the role of international actors in conflict prevention, conflict management and post-conflict reconstruction, the conference aims to: a) examine advances that have been made in linking the UN's Agendas for Peace and for Development in the 1990s; b) highlight the challenges faced by the security and development communities in moving towards a shared 'peacebuilding' agenda; c) identify the difficult political, institutional, operational and policy challenges facing practitioners, policymakers and researchers in the changed international environment of the early 21st century. The conference will seek to integrate gender considerations into each of its substantive panels.
- Topic:
- Security, Civil Society, Development, Peace Studies, and United Nations
1988. Meeting for Selection of an Interim Steering Committee for the African Network of Networks on Security Matters
- Author:
- Chris Ferguson and Anicia Lala
- Publication Date:
- 01-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform
- Abstract:
- In proceeding with the recommendations of the declaration that emerged from the Mozambique Security Network Symposium (SNS) held in July 2003, a meeting to discuss the creation of an African network of networks on security matters took place. This event took place under the aegis of the Global Facilitation Network for Security Sector Reform (GFN-SSR) and African Security Dialogue Research (ASDR) who kindly offered to host it in conjunction with the earlier work shop on Security Sector Governance (SSG) in Africa and the subsequent 3rd Advisory Group Meeting of the GFN-SSR.
- Topic:
- Security, Development, and International Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Africa
1989. Policy Learning, Policy Diffusion and the Making of a New Order
- Author:
- Covadonga Meseguer
- Publication Date:
- 11-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This chapter surveys the role of learning as mechanism of policy diffusion in the context of the creation of a new political order. I discuss policy learning against the background of recent research on the diffusion of deregulatory and regulatory policies, and attempt to distinguish learning from other mechanisms of diffusion. I then survey the challenges entailed in testing this mechanism and set out my particular approach: a rational version of learning. I also report the results of preliminary efforts to test learning as applied to the diffusion of regulatory policies. I conclude that learning cannot be rejected as a plausible mechanism of the diffusion of policies, although it shares its explanatory role with less rational mechanisms of diffusion, in particular policy emulation. Further research and analysis is needed to test learning in either its rational or its bounded version, and in doing so to delve into the politics of learning.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy, Development, Economics, and Politics
1990. Elementos de una aproximación interpretativa a las ciencias sociales
- Author:
- Farid Kahhat
- Publication Date:
- 09-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- Statesmen address security concerns based on their understanding of the issues at stake. Such a truism becomes problematic, though, once we realize that no fact or event does inherently pose a threat to a state's security. Threats can only be identified by silhouetting them against the background of an interpretive framework: only after we know what could count as a security threat can we recognize certain facts or events as particular instances of that general phenomena. Therefore, different frameworks of interpretation will elicit different meanings from the same facts and events, and suggest different courses of action in response to them.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Development, and Government
1991. Las relaciones económicas internacionales de México hacia el siglo XXI: retos y oportunidades. Reporte.
- Author:
- Antonio Ortiz Mena L.N. and Ninfa Fuentes
- Publication Date:
- 09-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- On December 2002, the Division of International Studies (DEI) at the Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas (CIDE) organized the forum “The International Economic Relations of Mexico: Challenges and Opportunities” with the support of the Konrad Adenauer Foundation. The forum approached the international economic relationships of Mexico, from the regional and multilateral perspectives. The objective of the forum and of this document is to evaluate the relationships that Mexico maintains with each one of the regions and countries approached in the forum, highlighting the challenges and the opportunities that each one of them presents. We live an opportune moment to design a prospective and coherent vision of the international economic relationships of Mexico in the XXI Century among government's organs in order to avoid arriving to a point in which Mexico would have a reduced maneuver margin. The participants who took part in the forum and a list of acronyms are included at the beginning of the document. The conference agenda can be found as well. This document intends to reproduce the essence of the forum discussions and the participants' presentations. It is our intention to reflect in a clear and honest manner the participants' statements in this paper. Any lack of precision is not intentional and is exclusively our responsibility.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Central America and Mexico
1992. La política exterior de las entidades federativas: un estudio comparado
- Author:
- Jorge A. Schiavon
- Publication Date:
- 08-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This working paper analyses the causes of the increased international activity of federated states' units, and the way and intensity in which this activity takes place. First, it explains that the growing participation of federal entities in foreign policy is a product, on one hand, of increasing globalization and interdependence in the international system, and, on the other, of the internal processes of liberalization, democratization, and decentralization. Second, using the Mexican case as an example, it explains how the legal rules in the Constitution establish the limits of international participation of the states of the federation; then, it analyses how the institutional configuration, the division of power, and the division of purpose in the system influence the degree of intensity of participation of these federal units in foreign policy issues, within the constitutional limitations. Likewise, it considers economic capacity and geographical location of the states as variables that also seem to influence their degree of activity. Then, it briefly explores how Mexican federal entities have participated in the internacional arena. Finally, it describes the relationships, in terms of foreign policy, between different orders of government in other federal systems, such as Australia, Brazil, Canada, Germany, Switzerland, and the United States, and contrasts these relationships with those in Mexico.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, Development, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, Canada, Germany, Australia, Switzerland, and Mexico
1993. Reforma estructural e integración regional en las Américas.
- Author:
- Jorge A. Schiavon and Ninfa Fuentes
- Publication Date:
- 05-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The structural reform and regional integration programs contribute to the economic development of the countries of the Western Hemisphere. In the last decade, several efforts of regional integration have taken place in the region. However, their success or failure is related, to a great extent, to the degree of structural reform implemented, due to the fact that the latter provides a common ground to launch the regional integration process. Thus, the central question of this research is: what is the impact of the structural reform process in the implementation of regional integration in the Americas?
- Topic:
- Development and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- South America and Central America
1994. El Islamismo como teoría política y de relaciones internacionales.
- Author:
- José Alberto Moreno
- Publication Date:
- 05-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The Islamism is the sum of theories and religious doctrines who fought for a harsh Quoranic interpretation and Shari'a (Islamic Law) applying, with the aim to transform the society to an idealistic return of the prophet Muhammad's time and manners. The present paper has a double objective: diffuse the main arguments of some scholars from this political thought and categorized the Islamism through intellectual periods and religious schools (Sunnism and Shiism).
- Topic:
- Development, Ethnic Conflict, Politics, and Religion
1995. Transfrontier Cooperation in the North-West of Russia: 21st Century
- Author:
- Vladlena V. Eliseeva
- Publication Date:
- 07-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- EastWest Institute
- Abstract:
- This study has been prepared in conjunction with the Transfrontier Cooperation Do- nor Forum held in St. Petersburg on April 25, 2003 under the EastWest Instituteís Regional and Transfrontier Cooperation (RTFC) Program. EWI has over ten years of experience in transfrontier cooperation in various regions of Europe. Long before issues surrounding the upcoming EU enlargement were a top priority on the EU-Russia agenda, EWIís RTFC Program was researching and assessing the impact of enlargement on the Baltic Sea Region in general, and on the Kaliningrad Region (EWIís priority area in the North-West of Russia) in particular. Today, in view of the upcoming European Union enlargement, transfrontier cooperation (TFC) has assumed an increasing importance for the future of a larger Europe.
- Topic:
- Development and Globalization
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
1996. Carry on Killing: Global Governance, Humanitarianism and Terror
- Author:
- Mark Duffield
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- In this working paper, Mark Duffield analyses the new security-development terrain in terms of theoretical and historical relations between sovereignty and governance, between hard and soft forms of power. His focus is on the structure and functions of global governance and the current crisis of the non-governmental humanitarian organizations whose relations to sovereignty have become evermore exposed as humanitarian interventions have been substituted by operations for regime change in the global "borderlands".
- Topic:
- Security, Development, Globalization, and Terrorism
1997. The Logic of Piloting and Trans-Border Regionalism: The Project-Oriented Approach in EU-Russian Cooperation
- Author:
- Andrey Makarychev and Sergei Prozorov
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- This paper addresses the impact of innovative developments in Russian policy-making discourse during the Putin presidency on the transformation of conflict issues in EU-Russian relations. The increasing recourse of Russian policy-makers in the border regions to the so-called 'projectoriented approach', which has an affinity to the modality of policy-making espoused by the EU programmes in Russia, has important consequences for conflictual dispositions in EU-Russian trans-border relations.
- Topic:
- Foreign Policy and Development
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
1998. Privatisation of Conflict, Security and War
- Author:
- Bjørn Moller
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- The paper assesses the general trend towards privatisation, in the developed as well as the developing world, where even "high politics" is increasingly performed by, or outsourced to, non-state actors. This is both the case for foreign and security politics, including war, where the use by states (as principals) of agents such as guerrilla movements, militias and private military companies (PMCs) is becoming more frequent. The special case of PMCs is analysed at length, coming out in favour of a combined legalisation and regulation, which is found to open up opportunities for military missions such as humanitarian interventions, not least in Africa, which would otherwise not be undertaken.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Security, Foreign Policy, and Development
1999. Opportunities and Pitfalls in the Migration-Development Nexus: Somaliland and Beyond
- Author:
- Ninna Nyberg Sorensen
- Publication Date:
- 12-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- Against the background of increased human mobility over the last three decades, resurgent interest in the migration-development nexus has stimulated new lines of academic inquiry and pushed policy considerations in new directions. This paper outlines current discussions around the links between migration, development and conflict. It also considers the complex nature of 'mixed flows', the difficulties in distinguishing between forced/political and voluntary/economic migration, and the links to development from these various–and often overlapping–types of flows. The paper uses migration from Somalia/Somaliland as the main example. This case–like the cases of most other sending countries–is of course specific. Still lessons can be drawn that are useful in other contexts, and may provide a basis for constructive discussion of potential opportunities in the current migration and international cooperation regimes.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Development, and Migration
- Political Geography:
- Africa
2000. Access to ARV Treatment - Aid, Trade and Governance in Uganda
- Author:
- Lisa Ann Richey and Stine Jessen Haakonsson
- Publication Date:
- 10-2004
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Danish Institute for International Studies (DIIS)
- Abstract:
- Access to antiretroviral medicines (ARVs) for AIDS treatment creates a field binding local and global governance. Local modalities of AIDS treatment are governed by the context of global trade through the implementation of patents on medicines in the World Trade Organisation (WTO), and within the context of global aid through development assistance. While industrialized countries, on the one hand, set aside donations to fight AIDS in developing countries, on the other hand, the same countries use the WTO to prevent developing countries from accessing cheap medicines. Uganda's success in reducing HIV prevalence is unique among African states, and it is considered the most promising candidate for effectively "scaling up" ARV treatment on the basis of its history of dealing with the pandemic. Yet, despite the many interventions addressing HIV/AIDS and dramatic price reductions of ARVs, only a minority of the infected population is currently receiving treatment, and promises of universal coverage for all who need it seem unrealistic. Our paper examines how the disconnect between international and national priorities on the one hand, and between aid and trade on the other, are currently affecting access to ARVs in Uganda. In spite of the political discourse of equality in treatment, the realities of funding suggest the difficult choices will be made from the level of policy to that of individual. Thus, global governance of trade and of aid will both shape and rely on individuals in charge of "implementation" which must be examined outside the sanitizing context of development discourse. We introduce our use of governance in this paper, and then discuss the global governance of aid to AIDS and global governance of trade and AIDS. The second half of the paper examines the Ugandan case study beginning with a political background and examination of aids policy, followed by the history of ARV provision and advocacy for ARVs, a discussion of the national health system and then aid initiatives and trade of ARVs in Uganda. Finally, we draw preliminary conclusions from our case on the conflicts between global and local governance of trade and aid to AIDS.
- Topic:
- Development, Human Welfare, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Uganda and Africa