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57871. Rival Views Of Postcommunist Market Society

Author:
Béla Greskovits
Publication Date:
10-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University
Abstract:
While reviewing various interpretations of the postcommunist transformation it is demonstrated that the manner social scientists think about postcommunism has much in common with the ideas of their predecessors who faced the emergence of capitalism over the past centuries. What explains the continuity of the major views? Why did the debate on the perspectives of capitalism and on the nature of its strengths and weaknesses reappear in the new historical case of postcommunist market society? This author argues that neither the specific historical nor the systemic context of capitalist expansion can account for the prevalence of competing interpretations. Rather the latter is the standard way social scientists think about systems and systemic change in general. But the trench-war between rival views of postcommunist market society also reflects the impact of new psychological, political, and institutional factors specific to the mass-production of social science ideas towards the end of the XXth century.
Topic:
Communism and Economics
Political Geography:
Europe

57872. Building a Composite Polity: Popular Contention in the European Union

Author:
Sidney Tarrow
Publication Date:
03-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University
Abstract:
While much research has focussed on the interest group process growing up around the institutions of European union, far less attention has been given to the contentious forms of politics appearing at the base of the process of European integration. Part of the problem lies in models of integration that either focus on single levels of the European Union — states or supranational entities — or on vertical policy networks and domains. But another important part results from the difficulty of systematically analyzing the reactions of ordinary people to EU directives. This paper both reports on a new, computer-assisted method of studying European contentious politics and draws on a case study of recent industrial conflict to demonstrate how supranational actors, national political elites, domestic social actors and the press are beginning to interact to produce a composite — and contentious — European polity.
Topic:
Government
Political Geography:
Europe

57873. Efficiency of the Welfare State

Author:
Pierre Pestieau and Claudine Gouyette
Publication Date:
01-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
Institute for European Studies at Cornell University
Abstract:
In general, when the concepts of efficiency and of welfare state are coupled, one first thinks of the effects of the welfare state, notably including the taxes it implies and the benefits it generates, on the efficiency of the economy. This topic has been widely discussed in recent works. One of the main charges addressed to modern welfare states is, indeed, that they would hurt economic performance and international competitiveness. Another charge just as widespread is that they would be inefficient in the provision of social services, and be responsible for the proliferation of transfer programs that are costly and miss their target populations. This charge is thus different from the first one, though not totally unrelated. It concerns the economic efficiency of the welfare state per se, and this is the topic of this paper.
Topic:
Government and Political Economy

57874. Conflict in Kosovo: Failure of Prevention? An Analytical Documentation, 1992-1998.

Author:
Stefan Troebst
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
Abstract:
Not too much of inside knowledge of the Balkans was needed to realise that the winter of 1997/98 turned the formerly autonomous Yugoslav province of Kosovo inhabited predominantly by Albanians into one of the most violent-prone crisis zones in Europe. In September 1997, a massive protest movement of Albanian students gained momentum; from November 1997 on, an underground "Liberation Army of Kosovo" (UÇK)) with an estimated strength of several hundred fighters increased the number of attacks on and assassinations of Serbian officials and police officers; and the regime retaliated first by police violence, show trials, long-term sentences, and nationalist tirades, then by bringing more and more security forces into the central part of Kosovo. In January 1998, The Economist depicted Kosovo as "Europe's roughest neighbourhood”.
Topic:
Conflict Prevention, Ethnic Conflict, and International Organization
Political Geography:
Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Serbia, Balkans, and Albania

57875. Global Banking

Author:
Tom Barry, Martha Honey, and Christian Weller
Publication Date:
05-1998
Content Type:
Policy Brief
Institution:
Foreign Policy In Focus
Abstract:
International banking activities frequently result in financial instability and serious economic downturns as financial markets become more open and deregulated. Competition from multinational banks has reduced the availability of credit to small- and medium-sized enterprises, to low- and middle-income consumers, and to farmers. While economies experience financial instabilities and declining credit, governments are losing the means to protect their domestic markets.
Topic:
Economics, Government, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance

57876. How Will the European Union Meet the 21st Century

Author:
Pal Dunay
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The story of post-World War 2 European integration had started before integration theory gained popularity. One has to bear in mind, however, that the idea of European integration was launched with modest objectives in the 1950s. Except for some visionary statesmen, like Jean Monnet and some others, both the subject matters to be covered by integration and the geographical scope was limited. Six countries aimed at establishing a free trade zone and not much else was on their "plate" when they signed the Rome Treaty on 25 March 1957.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

57877. Muddling Through? A Strategic Checklist for the United States in the Post-Cold War World

Author:
John Lewis Gaddis
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The single most striking feature of the post-Cold War environment is the diffusion, not the disappearance, of threats. The half-century extending from 1941 to 1991 was, for the United States, one in which threats were both focused and obvious. From the time of the surprise attack on Pearl Harbor until the final collapse of the Soviet Union exactly fifty years later, we knew who our enemies were, or at least might be. As a consequence, we abandoned the isolationism that had characterized most of our history in favor of an unaccustomed but - as it turned out - highly effective internationalism.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

57878. Prospects for Europe and the Atlantic Alliance at Century's End

Author:
William I. Hitchcock
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
Ever since the end of the Cold War, analysts have engaged in long discussions about what sort of international order would replace it. Though these discussions have ranged widely in their assessments, they usually took as their starting point a common assumption: that the Cold War order and the basic structure of international relations it represented, was over and done for. From 1989 until about 1995, this assessment seemed accurate: the alliance was falling apart, war broke out in Europe, the western economies were in a tailspin, and the delicate architecture that bound Germany to the states of Western Europe seemed to be in jeopardy, overburdened by the arrival of a united, powerful Germany. Whatever order we had, it didn't seem like anything we had seen before.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

57879. Security Issues for Russia in the New International Context

Author:
Yuri Nazarkin
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The starting point for this paper is the National Security Blueprint of the Russian Federation approved by Presidential Decree No. 1300 dated 17 December 1997. As the Blueprint itself clarifies, it is "a political document reflecting the aggregate of officially accepted views regarding goals and state strategy in the sphere of ensuring the security of the individual, society and the state from external and internal threats of a political, economic, social, military, man-made (technogennyy), ecological, information or other nature, in the light of existing resources and potential." It is a conceptual document of a general nature which is intended to be the basis for the elaboration of specific programmes and organisational documents in the sphere of ensuring the national security of the Russian Federation.
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe

57880. Conflict Management and European Security: The Problem of Collective Solidarity

Author:
Fred Tanner
Publication Date:
08-1998
Content Type:
Working Paper
Institution:
The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
Abstract:
The dynamics of European security has become considerably more difficult to comprehend in recent years. This is due primarily to two sets of developments. First an "amorphous threat-free post-Cold War security setting" has replaced the distinct Alliance-wide threat from the Soviet Union. Second, new risks and threats have increasingly affected European security from regions immediately adjoining Western Europe. Conflicts and notorious instability loom in the Caucasus, Central Asia, the Balkans and the Mediterranean region, including North Africa and the Middle East. As a consequence, security cooperation in Europe currently struggles to cope with these risks of non-military nature and ambiguous threat scenarios from the "out-of-area".
Topic:
Security, Defense Policy, and NATO
Political Geography:
Russia, United States, and Europe