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Begin New Search Topic International Relations Political Geography Europe Content Type Working Paper

291. A New Statecraft? Supranational Entrepreneurs and International Cooperation

Author:
Andrew Moravcsik
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Weatherhead Center for International Affairs, Harvard University
Abstract:
Studies of international regimes, law, and negotiation, as well as regional integration, near universally conclude that political entrepreneurship by high officials of international organizations—“supranational entrepreneurship”—decisively influences the outcomes of multilateral negotiations. Studies of the European Community (EC) have long stressed their informal agenda-setting, mediation, and mobilization. Yet the studies underlying this interdisciplinary consensus tend to be anecdotal, atheoretical, and uncontrolled. The study reported here derives and tests explicit hypotheses from general theories of political entrepreneurship and tests them across multiple cases (the five most important EC negotiations) while controlling for the actions of national governments. Two findings emerge: First, supranational entrepreneurship is generally redundant or futile; governments can almost always efficiently act as their own entrepreneurs. Second, rare cases of entrepreneurial success arise not when officials intervene to help overcome interstate collective action problems, as current theories presume, but when they help overcome domestic(or transnational) collective action problems. This suggests fundamental refinements in the core assumptions about transaction costs underlying general theories of international regimes, law, and negotiation.
Topic:
International Relations and International Cooperation
Political Geography:
Europe

292. Westphalia in Europe as West Failure Abroad? A Comparative Study of the Fate of the Nation-State in Non-Europe

Author:
Imtiaz Hussain
Publication Date:
01-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
Abstract:
Conventionally viewing the state as a black box and focusing almost exclusively on its outward orientation, the Westphalia paradigm, I argue, has outlived its purpose, and may even be misleading when applied to the more porous and democratic state today. Rather than measure state viability in terms of power balances abroad, three constituent elements extracted from the Westphalia literature are used to evaluate internal state viability instead: the relationship between the nation and the state, the capacities of the state itself, and the state within a collectivity. Whereas the first is operationalized in terms of Buzan's four-fold typology, the second focuses on how two forms of internal divisions have been resolved—between city and country interests over policy-making, and between various classes in society through governmental income redistribution programs—while the third evaluates the propensity of the state to delegate loyalties to any supranational entity in the 1990s. Over 160 sovereign countries are pooled into 5 geographical regions for the analysis. The results strengthen the above argument, and generally portray the exceptionalism of West Europe: It is the global hub of established national states, even though there are more state nations worldwide whose historical emergence accented internal development over external security considerations; viable states, measured in terms of established democracies, urban preponderance over policy making, and welfare redistribution; and transferring loyalties beyond the state.
Topic:
International Relations, Democratization, Development, and Government
Political Geography:
Europe, Maryland, and Westphalia

293. Private Equity Investment in Hungary: the Competitive Edge as a Force for Innovation

Author:
Eugene Spiro
Publication Date:
10-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
EastWest Institute
Abstract:
At the conference opening, György Surányi, President of the National Bank of Hungary, outlined Hungary's successful efforts to rejuvenate economic activity with the prospect of European Union membership approaching . Following the successful implementation of economic policies aimed at establishing a market economy, for the first time in 25 years Hungary is gradually moving towards sustainable economic growth. Real GDP gains of almost 4 percent per annum are evident without accompanying deterioration of the external accounts or increases in inflation.
Topic:
International Relations, Development, and Economics
Political Geography:
Europe

294. Global Trends 2010

Publication Date:
12-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Board of Governors of the Federal Reserve System
Abstract:
In fall 1996, the National Intelligence Council (NIC) and the Institute for National Strategic Studies (INSS) held a series of conferences at National Defense University to identify key global trends and their impact on major regions and countries of the globe. The exercise was designed to help describe and assess major features of the political world as they will appear in the year 2010.
Topic:
International Relations
Political Geography:
Africa, United States, Europe, Middle East, Asia, and South America

295. Democratisation from the Outside in: NGO and International Efforts to Promote Open Elections

Author:
Vikram K. Chand
Publication Date:
02-1997
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Carter Center
Abstract:
Until recently, the monitoring of elections in a sovereign country by outside actors was extremely rare. The United Nations (UN) had significant experience in conducting plebiscites and elections in dependent territories but did not monitor an election in a formally independent country until 1989, when it reluctantly became involved in the Nicaraguan electoral process. At the regional level, the Organization of American States (OAS) occasionally sent small delegations to witness elections in member states, but these missions were too brief to permit any real observation of the processes, and failed to criticise fraud. Since the 1980s election-monitoring has become increasingly common in transitional elections from authoritarian to democratic rule. Non-governmental organisations (NGOs), domestic and international, were the first to become involved in election-monitoring in the 1980s followed by international and regional organisations like the UN, the OAS, and the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) in the 1990s. Election-monitors played a crucial role in transitional elections held in the Philippines (1986), Chile (1989), Panama (1989), Nicaragua (1990) and Haiti (1990). In addition, elections began to form a crucial element of UN 'peace-building' strategies in countries torn apart by civil strife such as Namibia (1989), Cambodia (1993) and El Salvador (1994). By the middle of the 1990s, international election-monitoring had thus become widely accepted, and fairly universal standards established for defining the term 'free and fair' elections.
Topic:
International Relations, Democratization, Non-Governmental Organization, Sovereignty, and United Nations
Political Geography:
Europe, Philippines, Cambodia, Nicaragua, Chile, and Namibia

296. Discourse Analysis as Foreign Policy Theory

Author:
Ole Wæver
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
University of California Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation (IGCC)
Abstract:
Where is Germany heading? So we have been asking ourselves since the wall fell. We had been reasonably calmed down: they were apparently not out for new adventures of their own. No Eastward going it alone -- neither in Eastern Europe, nor with the Russians. Nor any autonomous power politics. On the contrary, Germany has primarily made itself noticed in global politics through its continued restraint, from half-hearted support in the Gulf War to qualms over participation in UN operations.
Topic:
International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Government
Political Geography:
United States, Europe, and Germany

297. The Institutional Terrain of the European Union

Author:
Neil Fligstein and Jason McNichol
Publication Date:
11-1996
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute of European Studies (IES), UC Berkeley
Abstract:
One of the central issues in making sense of the European Union is the question of the degree to which it functions as an autonomous state. One pole of this debate conceives of the EU as a supranational entity while the other argues that it remains an intergovernmental bargain. Here, we propose to analyze the EU in terms of the structuring of its policy domains. 12 of 17 domains appear organized by nongovernmental organizations. We conclude that while the governments retain direct control over important parts of the EU, they have allowed most policy domains at the EU level to become autonomous.
Topic:
International Relations and International Organization
Political Geography:
Europe