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57202. Can International Capital Standards Strengthen Banks in Emerging Markets?
- Author:
- Liliana Rojas-Suarez
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- Who should determine banks' capital standards: authorities or markets? What is the right definition of core capital: equity only or equity plus subordinated debt? Can the assessment of banks' individual credit risks by external rating agencies be of equal or better quality than the assessments derived from banks' own internal rating systems? These are some of the key financial regulatory issues currently being discussed by analysts in industrial countries, especially in the context of the proposed modification to the Basel Capital Adequacy Accord: Basel II is expected to replace the original 1988 Accord.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
57203. Macroeconomic Implications of the New Economy
- Author:
- Martin Neil Baily
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- Together with many policymakers and economists, I see in the 1990s expansion signs that new technologies that had been emerging for some time were finally paying off in stronger economic performance. I will use the expression 'new economy' to describe this period, although I recognize the pitfalls in this name. New economy is probably too broad a term and implies both more change and more permanent change than actually took place. But 'information economy' seems too narrow a term to describe the set of interrelated forces bringing about change in the economy, that include increased globalization, a more intense pressure of competition, the rapid development, adoption and use of information and communications technology (IT) and a favorable economic policy environment.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
57204. Finance and Changing US-Japan Relations: Convergence Without Leverage—Until Now
- Author:
- Adam S. Posen
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- In the postwar era, US-Japan economic relations have been characterized by substantial tensions, yet this has not damaged the underlying security relationship or critically harmed the multilateral economic framework. In fact, these two economies have become more integrated over time even as these tensions played out. These tensions, however, have required an enormous expenditure of political capital and officials' time on both sides of the Pacific and have led to foregone opportunities for institution building and policy coordination. They have deepened since Japan “caught up” with the United States around 1980, and Japanese and US firms began increasingly to compete for profits and market share in the same sectors. Moreover, as both the US and Japanese economies continue to mature – both in terms of the age of their populations and their industrial mix – they will likely face even greater tensions between them over allocating the management and costs of industrial adjustment.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, Israel, and East Asia
57205. Beyond Bipolar: A Three-Dimensional Assessment of Monetary Frameworks
- Author:
- Adam S. Posen and Kenneth N. Kuttner
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- A great deal of attention has been focused recently on the impact of exchange rate regimes, just as previous empirical research examined central bank autonomy and announced targets for domestic monetary policy. To date, however, these three elements of monetary frameworks have been assessed in isolation from one another, and all have been viewed in terms of a unidimensional spectrum of fixity versus flexibility. Using a newly-constructed dataset, this paper jointly analyzes and compares all three elements' effects on inflation and exchange rate behavior. The results show that each of the three elements has independent and distinct effects on nominal outcomes. Key findings include: (1) although hard pegs do tend to reduce inflation and attenuate exchange rate fluctuations within some range, they are clearly characterized by large devaluations; (2) central bank autonomy is associated with a more stable exchange rate and lower inflation; and (3) explicit inflation targeting reduces both inflation and its persistence, consistent with the view that inflation targeting increases flexibility through transparency. These results raise the possibility that a combination of central bank autonomy, inflation targeting, and a free float might offer the same benefits as any intermediate exchange rate regime on its own, without the proclivity to occasional large depreciations.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
57206. Rating Banks in Emerging Markets: What Credit Rating Agencies Should Learn From Financial Indicators
- Author:
- Liliana Rojas-Suarez
- Publication Date:
- 05-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- The rating agencies' and bank supervisors' records of prompt identification of banking problems in emerging markets has not been satisfactory. This paper suggests that such deficiencies could be explained by the use of financial indicators that, while appropriate for industrial countries, do not work in emerging markets. Among the conclusions, this paper shows that the most commonly used indicator of banking problems in industrial countries, the capital-to-asset ratio, has performed poorly as an indicator of banking problems in Latin America and East Asia. This is because of (a) severe deficiencies in the accounting and regulatory framework and (b) lack of liquid markets for bank shares, subordinated debt and other bank liabilities and assets needed to validate the “real” worth of a bank as opposed to its accounting value.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- East Asia and Latin America
57207. Unchanging Innovation and Changing Economic Performance in Japan
- Author:
- Adam S. Posen
- Publication Date:
- 05-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- The Toyota Commemorative Museum of Industry and Technology gives its visitors much to ponder. Established at the site in Nagoya where in 1911 Sakichi Toyoda founded his automatic loom factory (the basis of the family fortune, which later funded his son Kiichiro's development of automobile production), the museum was opened on June 11, 1994, the 100th anniversary of Toyoda's birth. It is a popular stop on field trips for Japanese schoolchildren, who are required to study in the 3rd grade the automobile industry. The messages, which Toyota wishes to instill in its young visitors, are the importance of “making things” and of “creativity and research.” And confronting all museum visitors upon entry, having central place in the vast and largely empty first room of the exhibits, is Sakichi Toyoda's one-of-a-kind vertical circular loom.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Japan, Israel, and East Asia
57208. IMF Structural Conditionality: How Much Is Too Much?
- Author:
- Morris Goldstein
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- “...detailed conditionality (often including dozens of conditions) has burdened IMF programs in recent years and made such programs unwieldy, highly conflictive, time consuming to negotiate, and often ineffectual.” “The IMF should cease lending to countries for long-term development assistance (as in sub-Saharan Africa) and for long-term structural transformation (as in post-Communist transition economies)...The current practice of extending long-term loans in exchange for member countries' agreeing to conditions set by the IMF should end.”
- Topic:
- Economics, International Organization, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Africa
57209. Foreign Direct Investment in China: Effects on Growth and Economic Performance
- Author:
- Edward M. Graham and Erika Wada
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- By almost all accounts, foreign direct investment (FDI) in China has been one of the major success stories of the past 10 years. Starting from a base of less than $19 billion in 1990, the stock of FDI in China rose to over $300 billion at the end of 1999. Ranked by the stock of inward FDI, China thus has become the leader among all developing nations and second among the APEC nations (only the United States holds a larger stock of inward FDI). China's FDI consists largely of greenfield investment, while inward FDI in the United States by contrast has been generated more by takeover of existing enterprises than by new establishment, a point developed later in this paper. The majority of FDI in China has originated from elsewhere in developing Asia (i.e., not including Japan). Hong Kong, now a largely self-governing “special autonomous region” of China itself, has been the largest source of record. The dominance of Hong Kong, however, is somewhat illusory in that much FDI nominally from Hong Kong in reality is from elsewhere. Some of what is listed as Hong Kong-source FDI in China is, in fact, investment by domestic Chinese that is “round-tripped” through Hong Kong. Other FDI in China listed as Hong Kong in origin is in reality from various western nations and Taiwan that is placed into China via Hong Kong intermediaries. Alas, no published records exist to indicate exactly how much FDI in China that is nominally from Hong Kong is in fact attributable to other nations.
- Topic:
- Economics, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, China, Israel, East Asia, Asia, and Hong Kong
57210. Subsidies, Market Closure, Cross-Border Investment, and Effects on Competition: The Case of FDI in the Telecommunications Sector
- Author:
- Edward M. Graham
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- Telecommunications long was a sector where sellers of services operated in protected local markets, where law and government regulation created and enforced barriers to entry, especially by foreign firms. In many nations, in fact, the provision of telecommunications services was reserved for state-owned monopoly suppliers. During the late 1980s and through the 1990s, however, many of these barriers have been removed while formerly state-owned firms have been partially or wholly privatized. This has in turn engendered some cross entry by telecom service providers; firms that once were purely domestic in the scope of their operations thus have become multinational.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Political Economy, and Science and Technology
57211. Price Level Convergence and Inflation in Europe
- Author:
- Gary Clyde Hufbauer, Erika Wada, and John H. Rogers
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Peterson Institute for International Economics (PIIE)
- Abstract:
- Consumer price inflation in the euro area declined steadily during most of the 1990s. However, in the last two years, both headline and core inflation have risen throughout the area, and sizable cross-country differences in inflation have re-emerged. This is illustrated by Figure 1, which shows the headline consumer price inflation rate for the euro area as a whole and for select member countries. As of October 2000, all euro area countries had headline inflation rates above the European Central Bank's 2 percent medium-term ceiling, with rates ranging from 2.1 percent in France and Austria to 6 percent in Ireland. In Greece, which will join the euro area on 1 January 2001, inflation was 3.8 percent.
- Topic:
- Economics and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Greece, France, and Austria
57212. The Bulgarian Defense Industry
- Author:
- Curtis M. Coward and Jeffrey P. Bialos
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- This Report identifies strategic options available to the Bulgarian government and its defense industry, as well as the United States and its NATO partners, for transforming and repositioning the industry for the 21st century and facilitating its integration into the NATO and European Union industrial base. Since other Partnership for Peace (PfP) countries that are aspirants to NATO membership face similar difficulties concerning their defense industries, many of the recommendations herein apply to these countries as well. The report is based on numerous interviews with officials of government entities, private sector firms, and nongovernmental organizations and a review of pertinent governmental and private reports and original documents. A number of the members of the Atlantic Council's working group visited Bulgaria and several of its defense firms in April 2001. Given limitations of time and access to information, the report does not, however, attempt to set forth a thorough review of each firm in the Bulgarian industry.
- Topic:
- Security and Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States and Eastern Europe
57213. Thinking Beyond the Stalemate in U.S. - Iranian Relations, Volume I - Policy Review
- Author:
- Brent Scowcroft, C. Richard Nelson, Lee H. Hamilton, and James Shlesinger
- Publication Date:
- 05-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- The current stalemate between the United States and Iran, while emotionally satisfying to many Americans, does not serve overall U.S. interests well. It hinders the achievement of several key U.S. geopolitical interests, especially over the longer term. These interests include, but are not limited to, regional stability, energy security, and the broader and evolving geopolitical relationships between the United States and China and Russia in the Persian Gulf and Caspian basin. Furthermore, the leading industrial countries are moving to improve relations with Iran.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Foreign Policy
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, China, and Middle East
57214. Permanent Alliance? NATO's Prague Summit and Beyond
- Author:
- C. Richard Nelson, Chas W. Freeman Jr., Wesley K. Clark, Max Cleland, Gordon Smith, and Robert L. Hutchings
- Publication Date:
- 05-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- With U.S. leadership, the Alliance has undertaken an impressive transformation over the past decade: from the July 1990 London Summit, which heralded a “Europe whole and free,” to the April 1999 Washington Summit, which welcomed three former Warsaw Pact members as new allies, even as NATO forces were engaged in combat for the first time. But the Alliance has not yet realized its full potential as an institution embracing all democratic nations of Europe dedicated to collective defense and embodying the interests and values of the transatlantic community. Moreover, the allies still confront important challenges to their shared goal of bringing lasting security to the European continent as a whole, as well as to the overall vitality of the transatlantic relationship.
- Topic:
- Security, NATO, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and London
57215. Changing Terms of Trade: Managing the New Transatlantic Economy
- Author:
- David L. Aaron and Donald L. Guertin
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Atlantic Council
- Abstract:
- The economic relationship between the United States and the European Union (EU) is in the midst of a significant transition. In the past, the dominant element of that relationship was trade. This was only natural, given their large share of the global trading system: the United States generates 19 percent of world trade, and the European Union 20 percent. Moreover, the United States is the EU's largest trading partner, while the EU is the single largest importer into the United States and the second largest market for U.S. exports. But in recent years, several new elements have become more prominent in the transatlantic economic relationship, bringing with them both challenges and opportunities.
- Topic:
- Economics and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
57216. Governance and Politics of the Internet Economy–Historical Transformation or Ordinary Politics with a New Vocabulary?
- Author:
- Steven Weber and John Zysman
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
- Abstract:
- Driven by two fundamental processes, rapid technological change as well as social innovation and reorganization, a new digital economy, the E-conomy, is emerging. Rather than merely adding an Internet sector to the economy, the E-conomy has brought about tools for thought, tools that transform every sector of the economy by amplifying brainpower the way steam engines amplified muscle power during the Industrial Revolution. For analytic purposes, the rise of the E-conomy can be told as a story composed of 1) networks and tools, 2) e-business and e-society, 3) the productivity dilemma resolved, and 4) governance and politics. In the short run, the transformative processes unleashed by the E-conomy are likely to lead to new bargains among existing coalitions and interest groups. In the long run, the changes underway promise to fundamentally alter the political sociology of vast communities, give rise to new interests and coalitions, and transform the institutional foundation of social, economic and political life.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, Political Economy, Politics, and Science and Technology
57217. The Growth and Development of the Internet in the United States
- Author:
- Martin Kenney
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
- Abstract:
- Rarely does a new technology emerge that galvanizes a dramatic rethinking of the nature of commerce. The Internet is such a technology. At this early stage, it is difficult to appreciate fully the importance of the Internet, but some speculate it might be as momentous as the arrival of the telegraph (Cohen et al. 2000; Standage 1999). Radically new communication technologies such as the Internet have multiple applications and often become ubiquitous. As such, the adoption, diffusion, and development of this new technology provide an especially penetrating view of how different national innovation systems have responded to and shaped the commercial possibilities inherent in the Internet. Of course, such an assessment for an economy as large as that of the U. S. is difficult. It is further complicated by the peculiar way in which communications technologies permeate and facilitate connections and relationships. Often the action of such technologies is imperceptible to most of the actors involved and even to aggregate statistics; e. g., better information transfer between customers and suppliers is not manifested in the finished good, though it is embodied in the good in terms of lower cost and/ or higher quality. Given the diffuse nature and the speed of the Internet's evolution, any analysis can only be tentative.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States
57218. The Internet and E-commerce Development in Mexico
- Author:
- Martin Kenney, James Curry, and Oscar Contreras
- Publication Date:
- 05-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
- Abstract:
- The Internet is by all accounts one of the most important innovations of the late twentieth century. As yet the Internet's impact on the economies of developed countries is not obvious, and the economic implications for developing countries are even more unclear. Already much has been written about a supposed "digital divide" within nations and between nations, but no one has a clear understanding of the exact dimensions or implications of this divide. This paper does not take any position on whether Mexico is suffering from a digital divide or is likely to do so in the future; rather, it focuses on the recent rise of Internet sites and e-commerce in Mexico.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- Mexico
57219. Creating an Environment: Developing Venture Capital in India
- Author:
- Rafiq Dossani and Martin Kenney
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Berkeley Roundtable on the International Economy
- Abstract:
- In the last decade, one of the most admired institutions among industrialists and economic policy makers around the world has been the U. S. venture capital industry. A recent OECD (2000) report identified venture capital as a critical component for the success of entrepreneurial high-technology firms and recommended that all nations consider strategies for encouraging the availability of venture capital. With such admiration and encouragement from prestigious international organizations has come various attempts to create an indigenous venture capital industry. This article examines the efforts to create a venture capital industry in India.
- Topic:
- International Political Economy, International Trade and Finance, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States and India
57220. The Role of the State in the Labour Market: Its Impact on Employment and Wages In Portugal as Compared with Spain
- Author:
- José Da Silva Lopes
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- The role of the State in the economy and in the social arena was deeply transformed in the second half of the 1970s, on account of the change of the political regime. The integration into the European Union since 1985 has brought new radical changes in that role. The paper describes the most important of those changes, putting a special emphasis on social policies and on the labour market, and on the challenges that have to be faced because of European Monetary Union.
- Topic:
- Government and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57221. In Defense of the “Democratic Deficit”: Reassessing Legitimacy in the European Union
- Author:
- Andrew Moravcsik
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Concern about the EU's 'democratic deficit' is misplaced. Judged against prevailing standards in existing advanced industrial democracies, rather than those of an ideal plebiscitary or parliamentary democracy, the EU is democratically legitimate. Its institutions are tightly constrained by constitutional checks and balances: narrow mandates, fiscal limits, super-majoritarian and concurrent voting requirements and separation of powers. There is little evidence that the EU impacts an unjustifiable neo-liberal bias on EU policy. The apparently disproportionate insulation of EU institutions reflects the subset of functions they perform – central banking, constitutional adjudication, civil prosecution, economic diplomacy and technical administration – which are matters of low electoral salience commonly delegated in national systems, for normatively justifiable reasons. Efforts to expand participation in the EU, even if successful, are thus unlikely to greatly expand meaningful deliberation. On balance, the EU redresses rather than creates biases in political representation, deliberation and output.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Government
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57222. Fifteen Years On: Spanish Membership in the European Union Revisited
- Author:
- Charles Powell
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This paper attempts to describe and account for the major changes undergone by Spain as an EU player since her accession in 1986. Many analysts appear to have espoused the view that most if not all of these can be attributed to the fact that, following the 1996 general election, a decidedly pro-integrationist Felipe González was replaced as prime minister by a vaguely eurosceptical José María Aznar. Undoubtedly, ideological considerations (and, more importantly perhaps, differences in political culture) must be taken into account when examining the evolution of Spain's European policy over the past fifteen years. However, this paper will argue that changing policy styles and contents should be understood in terms of both the learning process undergone by all new member states as they mature, and the need to adapt and respond to developments within the EU, most notably the evolution of the European integration process itself.
- Topic:
- Development and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57223. Social Citizenship and Institution Building:EU-Enlargement and the Restructuring of Welfare States in East Central Europe
- Author:
- Christiane Lemke
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- With the EU-enlargement process well underway, this paper focuses on social citizenship as a conceptual frame for analyzing the restructuring of social institutions in applicant countries in East Central Europe. So far, comparative welfare state analysis has concentrated mainly on the developed economies of the OECD-countries; there is little systematic analytical work on the transitions in post-communist Europe. Theoretically, this paper builds on comparative welfare state analysis as well as on new institutionalism. The initial hypothesis is built on the assumption that emerging patterns of social support and social security diverge from the typology described in the comparative welfare state literature inasmuch as the transformation of postcommunist societies is distinctly different from the building of welfare states in Europe. The paper argues that institutionbuilding is shaped by and embedded in the process of European integration and part of governance in the EU. Anticipating full membership in the European Union, the applicant countries have to adapt to the rules and regulations of the EU, including the “social acquis”. Therefore, framing becomes an important feature of institutional changes. The paper seeks to identify distinct patterns and problems of the institutionalization of social citizenship.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Security
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Eastern Europe
57224. On Incentives in Technology Policymaking: What the EU can learn from the U.S. developments
- Author:
- Wolfgang Gick
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- This paper focuses on the incentives political and bureaucratic actors face in the institutional setting of EU technology policy. In examining the implications and assumptions of neoclassical and evolutionary theories of technological change, it tries to answer why some approaches are difficult to translate into policy designs. By focusing on positive policymaking the paper examines why policy learning does not occur in certain institutional settings. A special focus is on the informational constraints that limit policy design. Since evaluation and oversight mechanisms have not been sufficiently developed and accepted within EU settings, there is much room for inefficiency, as a basic agency model with hidden information shows. If political planners have incomplete information about the state of the world, programs cannot be designed efficiently. Hence, a better link between evaluation and program design could reduce inefficiencies. Regarding this point, current discussions in U.S. policymaking seem to focus increasingly on program design effects and policy implementation.
- Topic:
- Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
57225. Decentralized Cooperation and the Future of Regulatory Reform
- Author:
- Pepper D. Culpepper
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Minda de Gunzburg Center for European Studies, Harvard University
- Abstract:
- Faced with the fact of sweeping regulatory reform, how do companies decide how to respond to a new set of policies? This paper argues that this problem requires a new conception of policymaking: a conception that recognizes the analytical primacy of achieving coordination under uncertainty. I call this challenge the problem of securing decentralized cooperation. Negotiated reforms are a common leitmotif of the current wave of reforms taking place in various European countries, whereas American attempts to reinvent government opt to replace the state with the market. There are general lessons in this approach for both strategies. Unlike the earlier attempts to establish neo-corporatist bargains at the national level in European countries, the success of bargained pacts in Europe will depend increasingly on allowing private actors to design the best solutions to centrally identified problems. The challenges of bringing private information to bear on public policy will increase in the future, and not only in supply-side economic policy reforms. One such area is environmental regulation, which is typically viewed as an area of pure state regulation. This is also an area where market-based solutions are frequently proposed as the most efficient solution to problems of pollution. As I demonstrate through the initiative of the Chesapeake Bay Program in the United States, the challenges identified above for areas of economic policymaking are now relevant to environmental initiatives, even in liberal market economies such as the US and the UK. The extent of government success in such initiatives will be determined by the ability of governments to understand the importance of private information and their capacity to develop private sector institutions that can help procure it. Attempts to replace a malfunctioning state with a market solution, currently very much in vogue in certain quarters in the United States, will fail, as long as they do not recognize the distinctive problems inherent in securing decentralized cooperation.
- Topic:
- Economics and Industrial Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, United Kingdom, and Europe
57226. Observing the 2002 Mexico Elections
- Author:
- Marcela Szymanski
- Publication Date:
- 03-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Carter Center
- Abstract:
- The Carter Center has a long history of engagement with Mexico with the shared goal of improving the electoral system in that country. In the early 1990s, the Center helped national observer groups to form and sent international observers to assist in domestic election monitoring. It also invited Mexicans to observe the U.S. elections in 1992. In 1994, the Center was among the first international observers to monitor elections in Mexico, and its observations helped shape electoral reforms that framed those and the 1997 elections, which the Center also observed.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Development
- Political Geography:
- Latin America and Mexico
57227. Observing Political Change in Venezuela: The Bolivarian Constitution and 2000 Elections
- Author:
- Laura Neuman and Jennifer McCoy
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Carter Center
- Abstract:
- Venezuela under President Hugo Chávez undertook a bold experiment to revamp its political system and address economic inequities and poverty. The country held seven votes in two years as voters chose Hugo Chávez to lead them in December 1998 and then supported his radical reform program, beginning with a new constitution. A Constitutional Assembly was elected in July 1999 to draft a new constitution, which voters approved in December 1999. Every elected position in the country was then presented to the voters again in a two-stage election in July and December 2000. While we do not believe that the election irregularities would have changed the 2000 presidential results, the significant politicization of the elections and organizational deficiencies contributed to a lack of confidence in the process and the nonpresidential results, thus leading us to characterize the July 2000 elections as flawed.
- Topic:
- Democratization and Development
- Political Geography:
- South America, Latin America, and Venezuela
57228. The Defense Monitor: Letter from the President
- Author:
- Rachel Stohl, Michael Donovan, Tomas Valasek, and Bruce.G Blair
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Defense Information
- Abstract:
- In the immediate wake of the terrorist atrocities, the entire CDI staff devoted itself to providing timely information and insight into the U.S. and world response to the crisis. Since then, we have channeled most of our effort into addressing the terrorist threat and its alleviation. Over 100 articles and updates have been posted on our web site on a daily basis, attracting heavy traffic to the site by an appreciative audience. Numerous other projects have been launched as part of this urgent new agenda - for instance, a joint project on nuclear terrorism involving Russian officials from the Ministry of Atomic Energy and CDI staff from Washington and Moscow (home of a new CDI office).
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, and International Organization
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Washington, and Moscow
57229. The Defense Monitor: Fatally Flawed? U.S. Policy Toward Failed States
- Author:
- Rachel Stohl, Michael Stohl, and Matthew Lewis
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Defense Information
- Abstract:
- The Events Of Sept. 11 may prove, as so many have claimed in their immediate aftermath, to be a true watershed in international relations and for the lives of American citizens. However, there can be no doubt that the events changed the priorities of U.S. President George W. Bush, and challenged the approach to international relations that characterized the first nine months of the new administration. To that end, the current security environment will have significant impacts on the persisting problem of failed and failing states.
- Topic:
- Religion and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Arabia
57230. The Defense Monitor: Fiscal Year 2002 Budget Request
- Author:
- Christopher Hellman and Daniel Smith
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Defense Information
- Abstract:
- The bush administration is requesting $343.2 billion for the Pentagon in Fiscal Year 2002. This is $32.6 billion above current levels, and includes the $14.2 billion increase requested for the military in the March budget release (see below). This total also includes $14.3 billion for the defense functions of the Department of Energy.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States
57231. The Defense Monitor: Population Growth and Water Resources in the Middle East
- Author:
- Rachel Stohl, Christopher Hellman, Tomas Valasek, Leigh Josey, and Nicholas Berry
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Defense Information
- Abstract:
- Political strife is nothing new in the Middle East. In fact, many of the present-day disputes date back 100 years or more. But the increasing scarcity of renewable water resources and the simultaneous high population growth add new urgency to the necessity to devise a settlement.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Agriculture, Demographics, and Environment
- Political Geography:
- United States and Middle East
57232. The Defense Monitor: NMD Development is not Hostage to the ABM Treaty
- Author:
- Philip E. Coyle
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Defense Information
- Abstract:
- To prove he is serious about National Missile Defense, President George W. Bush must abrogate the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty now, according to the most strident critics of the treaty. The longstanding ABM accord with Russia, it is said, is thwarting the technology needed for missile defense.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- United States
57233. The Defense Monitor: The Security Environment in Asia
- Author:
- Nicholas Berry
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Center for Defense Information
- Abstract:
- The security environment in Asia has become highly complex since the end of the Cold War. A legacy from that superpower struggle still affects security relations, but what is surprising is the re-emergence of issues associated with World War II and before. Asians have long memories. Their injuries are not forgotten. Past history is just yesterday.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Security, and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States
57234. Potential Sources of Financing for U.S. Ventures in Russia
- Author:
- Askar Askarov, Katharine Reed, and Linn E. Schulte-Sasse
- Publication Date:
- 12-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
- Abstract:
- Following the end of the Cold War, the United States and its allies recognized that it was in their vital security interests to promote stable transitions in the countries of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the New Independent States (NIS) of the former Soviet Union. For the most part, such transitions would depend on the efforts of the states in transition themselves, including many that had been newly formed. However, one way in which the Western nations could help was by economic assistance -- both financial and technical.
- Topic:
- International Trade and Finance and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- Russia, United States, Europe, Eastern Europe, Asia, and Soviet Union
57235. How Verification Can Be Used to Ensure Irreversible Deep Reductions of Nuclear Weapons
- Author:
- Wu Jun
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
- Abstract:
- Verifying nuclear disarmament is a complex technical process. This paper examines the techniques that could be used to verify future nuclear weapon reductions and analyzes the motivation for the nuclear states to accept deep weapon cuts and the prospect for future nuclear reductions. To allow large nuclear reductions and assure credible verification, several steps are suggested in this paper: all nuclear warheads should be registered and tagged; the total inventories of plutonium and high-enriched uranium as well as the fissile cores dismantled from the warheads should be verified; the nuclear delivery vehicles and launcher numbers and types should be monitored as outlined in the START and INF treaties; and agreed nuclear-capable delivery vehicle production should also be monitored.
- Topic:
- Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- United States
57236. Verifying the Agreed Framework
- Author:
- Michael May, Nancy Suski, Robert Schock, William Sailor, Wayne Ruhter, Ronald Lehman, James Hassberger, Zachary Davis, George Bunn, and Chaim Braun
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Security and Cooperation (CISAC), Stanford University
- Abstract:
- The Agreed Framework (AF) between the United States of America and the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK), signed in Geneva on October 21, 1994, has become the centerpiece of recent US efforts to reduce the threat of conflict with North Korea. In particular, it seeks to bring the DPRK into compliance with its obligations under the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) not to acquire nuclear weapons. The AF document sets goals, outlines programs, initiates a US-led nuclear-power consortium, and notes linkages. The AF refers to a wider range of diplomatic and international security initiatives, such as the NPT and the agreement on denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, and is meant to reinforce others, including those related to the reconciliation of the two Koreas.
- Topic:
- Arms Control and Proliferation and Nuclear Weapons
- Political Geography:
- United States, Israel, East Asia, and Korea
57237. (Re)Constructing Constructivist International Relations Research
- Author:
- Wayne Sandholtz, Hayward R. Alker, Raymond Duvall, Cecelia Lynch, Daniel Lynch, Stephen Majeski, Nicholas Onuf, Colin Wight, Robert English, Saori Katada, and J. Ann Tickner
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for International Studies, University of Southern California
- Abstract:
- On October 6, 2001 the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California held a workshop entitled “(Re)Constructing Constructivist International Relations Research.” This workshop joins a series held by CIS on cutting edge research in international relations. Participants were sent a statement composed by Hayward Alker and a copy of Nicholas Onuf's paper and asked to bring written comments based on these two documents.
- Topic:
- International Relations
- Political Geography:
- California
57238. Iraq's Military Capabilities: Fighting A Wounded, But Dangerous, Poisonous Snake
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman
- Publication Date:
- 12-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
- Abstract:
- If we go to war with Iraq, we will go to war with forces that are the military equivalent of a wounded poisonous snake. They are weakened, but still dangerous, and they may lash out in ways that are truly dangerous. In broad terms, Iraq's forces have been in steadily decline ever since the beginning of the fighting in the Gulf War. They have been weakened by military defeat, by the impact of UN inspections, by wars of underfunding and by a decade without significant arms imports. At the same time, they are still the most powerful conventional forces in the Gulf, and Iraq may have some very unconventional weapons.
- Topic:
- Security and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States and Middle East
57239. Biological War and the "Buffy Paradigm"
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
- Abstract:
- The most important single message that anyone can communicate in regard to biological weapons is that we face a very uncertain mix of existing threats politics, commercial development, and technology will change constantly as far into the future as we can look. The issue is not what we know, but how little we know and how little we can predict.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- United States
57240. Islamic Extremism in Saudi Arabia and the Attack on Al Khobar
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
- Abstract:
- This draft analysis is be circulated for comment as part of the CSIS “Saudi Arabia Enters the 21 st Century Project.” It will be extensively revised before final publication.
- Topic:
- Security and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- United States, Middle East, Arabia, and Saudi Arabia
57241. Defending America: Redefining the Conceptual Borders of Homeland Defense
- Author:
- Anthony H. Cordesman
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
- Abstract:
- Chemical weapons have not been used effectively in attacks on the American homeland. Reports that the bombers of the World Trade Center considered trying to add a chemical weapon like sodium cyanide to their explosives seem to be untrue, and led to an unsubstantiated assertion by the trial judge. There have, however, been a number of attempts to use chemical weapons by domestic extremists and individuals. For example, in 1997, members of the KKK plotted to place an improvised explosive device on a hydrogen sulfide tank at a refinery near Dallas, Texas. There is a well-established, low-level risk that such weapons will be used in the future, although there is no way to predict the frequency of such attacks, their scale, potential success, or lethality.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, Terrorism, and Weapons of Mass Destruction
- Political Geography:
- United States and America
57242. From B2B to G2G: Re-engineering the Canada-United States Relationship
- Author:
- Christopher Sands
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS)
- Abstract:
- The new century is marked by a transformation in the economy that is changing the environment in which the United States makes policy regarding Canada, which is already a complex and diffuse process. First: what is new about the new economy? Second, how does the U.S. approach Canada in its policy processes. Third, how does Canada attempt to manage its relations with the United States? Fourth, how can business models help both countries to improve relations?
- Topic:
- Energy Policy and Environment
- Political Geography:
- United States, Germany, and North America
57243. India's Reform Agenda: Micro, Meso and Macro Economic Reforms
- Author:
- Vijay L. Kelkar
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Center for the Advanced Study of India
- Abstract:
- During the 1990s, India has been among the fastest growing economies of the world. This year would be the third consecutive year when the real GDP growth is six percent or higher. This has been accompanied by exchange rate stability and a low inflation rate. For instance, currently, the underlying core inflation rate remains only three percent per annum. Are these trends of growth acceleration sustainable to meet India's two strategic objectives, which are eradication of poverty, and playing our rightful role in the world by becoming a source of growth and stability for the global economy? To analyze this, it is necessary to look at the Indian economy in a somewhat longer and global perspective. This is essential to identify the necessary policy reforms which are the topic of my lecture today, namely, India's Reform Agenda: Micro, Meso and Macro Economic Reforms.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- South Asia and India
57244. CERI: Politics Behind The Mask: Studying Contemporary Carnivals in Political Perspective, Theoretical and Methodological Suggestions
- Author:
- Denis-Constant Martin
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
- Abstract:
- Carnivals are a type of rite of renewal where mask and laughter spur the invention of highly symbolic modes of expression. They offer opportunities for the study of social representations and, since they are both recurring and changing, they constitute a ground where not only social change can be assessed, but where the meanings of social change can be best understood. The first part of this paper reviews and discusses theories of carnival, in particular those related to its relationship to power and social hierarchies. The second part proposes a few methodological suggestions for the study of carnival from a political perspective, emphasizing semiotic analysis and surveys using non-directive methods.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Government, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
57245. "Injustes" sanctions: les constructions internationales de la dénonciation des embargos et l'escalade de la vertu abolitionniste
- Author:
- Ariel Colonomos
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centre d'Etudes et de Recherches Internationales (CERI)
- Abstract:
- At a time when the use of sanctions has intensified considerably, criticism directed at embargos is gaining ground. In interpreting this significant rise in opposition, this article shows how and why mobilization against sanctions has developed, what sort of actors are involved and what forms it takes. This research brings to light the formation of networks and coalitions against both unilateral and multilateral measures. It underlines the role, status and scope of those whose business it is to fashion norms, by questioning the main analytical categories their strategies are usually based on. An expertise in embargo assessment, destined to levy judgment on a type of very specific violence, is developing in both national and transnational public spaces. This research, analyzing the emergence of this expertise, sheds light on the development of a conception of unjust sanctions and identifies the mechanisms of its construction on an international scale. This text in particular underlines the importance of traditions of just war, especially their reinterpretation by actors on the international scene and its moral norm-makers. Considering the development of these standards allows us to grasp one of the most decisive aspects of the use of force in the post-cold war world, as well as the establishment of certain international reforms.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, International Cooperation, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Global Focus
57246. The Politics of Trade in North America: Comparing Models and Industries
- Author:
- Arturo Borja Tamayo, Philippe Faucher, Scott Morgenstern, and Daniel Nielson
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This working paper studies the negotiations of the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) in two industrial chains: textile-apparel and auto parts-automotive. It compares two theoretical models. The first uses two internal variables (interest group strength and industry competitiveness) to explain the tariffs that were negotiated for the phase-out period of NAFTA. The second explores alternatives to increase the explanatory capacity of two-level games models. It incorporates the element of asymmetry between countries, and questions Putnam's (1988) hypothesis on the impact of domestic politics upon international negotiations. This second model explains the difference in the rules of origin that were adopted in NAFTA for the two industrial chains. The work reaches three conclusions. First, it confirms the necessity to specify different dependent variables to explain the outcomes of international trade agreements. Second, it concludes that a model using the two-level logic has explanatory advantages over one that does not combine levels. Third, it points out the potential to combine elements from the two models to reach a more complete explanation.
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- North America
57247. Government - Financial Sector Relations and the New Financial Structure in Mexico
- Author:
- Charles W. Parker III and Susan Minushikin
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- For the first time in its modern history, Mexico is confronting a financial sector that is controlled by foreign investors. At the same time it is highly concentrated. The economic challenges that such an industry structure presents were the focus of public debate over the sales of Bancomer and Banco Serfin. The political challenges have not yet become a part of the public debate. These include changing relations between the banks and the government. This paper traces the history of government-bank relations and speculates on how this relationship may change given the new structure of Mexico's financial sector.
- Topic:
- Economics, Industrial Policy, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- North America and Mexico
57248. Genocide and Humanitarian Intervention: Incorporating the Gender Variable
- Author:
- Adam Jones
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The gender variable is one of the least-analyzed and most misunderstood elements of genocidal killing. This paper seeks to develop the authors inclusive framing of "gendercide" i.e., gender-selective mass killing, by exploring the relevance of gender to genocide prevention and humanitarian intervention. Among the specific arguments to be advanced is that the genocidal or prot-genocidal targeting of males, especially "battle-age" me, is one of the most reliable indicators of the onset, or impending onset, of full-scale genocide. In the three "classic" genocides of the twentieth century, for example - against the Armenian community in Turkey, European Jews, and the Tutsis of Rwanda - full-scale genocide was preceded by a wide range of gender-selective measures, including mass roundups and localized killings of men. The demonization of out-group males was a key feature of the propaganda discourse that paved the way for genocide. In addition, the initial stages of all these genocides overwhelmingly targeted males for extermination, a phenomenon that is also evident in numerous contemporary and historical cases. Associated patterns of demonization of "out-group" women, and abuses including rape and sexual assault, need to be factored into the analysis. </p
- Topic:
- Gender Issues, Genocide, Human Rights, and Human Welfare
57249. The Russian Press in the Post-Soviet Era: A Case Study of Izvestia
- Author:
- Adam Jones
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The progress of the Russian press in the late Soviet and post-Soviet eras can be described (with apologies to Vladimir Lenin) as "two steps forward, on step back." The flowering of glasnost (openness) under Mikhail Gorbachev le to a "golden age" of Soviet journalism, including an explosion of new publications and a lifting of nearly all state restrictions on journalists' professional activities. However, the collapse of the USSR and the onset of material crisis in 1991-92 quickly produced a winnowing of the press and a retrenchment on the part of surviving publications. At the same time, powerful new forces - especially oligarchs and regional and leaders - arose to vie with the state for influence over post-Soviet media. This paper explores the trajectory of one of the leading newspapers of the Soviet and post-Soviet period, Izvestia, in the light of those broader trends. While Izvestia emerged from the ashes of Soviet communism with formal control over its material plant and journalistic collective, it was soon subjected to a tug-of-war between powerful actors determined to control its destiny - first the Communist-dominated Duma (parliament), and then large corporations and business oligarchs. The struggle led, in 1997, to the dismissal of the paper's editor. Oleg Golembiovsky, and the departure of many staff to form Novye Izvestia (New Izvestia) - though this publication too, was also unwilling or unable to avoid the temptations of a close alliance with one of the leading oligarchs, Boris Berezovsky. The findings are place in the broader comparative context of the press in transition, based on the author's research into process of media liberalization and transition worldwide.
- Topic:
- Cold War, Development, and Government
- Political Geography:
- Russia, Europe, and Asia
57250. Political Science, International Relations, and AIDs in Africa
- Author:
- Catherine Boone and Jake Batsell
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- Political Science as an academic discipline has been slow to grapple with the enormous implications of the AIDS crisis for society, politics, and economy in much of the developing world. This paper argues that political scientists do, in fact, have much to offer the struggle to understand and respond to the AIDS crisis. It also argues that research in this area could contribute to theory-building in areas of traditional concern to political science. There is a rich array of research agendas linking AIDS and politics that are worthy of systematic attention. We sketch out five of these as they relate to Africa. They have to do with explaining variations in state response to the pandemic; the relationship between African governments and NGOs; the AIDS challenge to neo-liberalism; AIDS and North-South tensions; and connections between AIDS and international security issues. The discussion is intended to be suggestive; it is intended to provoke and encourage research and scholarly debate on these issues.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Politics
- Political Geography:
- Africa
57251. Caminando por la Historia Intelectual de Seymour Martin Lipset
- Author:
- Jesús Velasco
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This essay analyzes the life and work of one of the most distinguished American sociologists of the twentieth century, Seymour Martin Lipset. The essay evaluates two fundamental themes in Lipset's work, his analysis of democracy and anti-democracy and his thoughts on American exceptionalism. The paper concludes with some lessons derived from Lipset's work and life for Mexico and Mexican academics.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Education
- Political Geography:
- America
57252. Sobre Contagios y Remedios: La Heterodoxia Económica del New Deal, La Políca Exterior de Roosevelt y su Impacto sobre la Administracón Cerdenista
- Author:
- Joge Schiavon
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- The article explores the Mexico-United States bilateral relation during the administrations of Franklin D. Roosevelt and Lazaro Cardenas, in order to better understand how U.S. domestic and foreign policies influence the management of its relation with Mexico, which in turn can facilitate or not the implementation of public policies in the Mexican system. The principal hypothesis is that the New Deal modified the American liberal conception of state intervention in economic and social issues inside the United States, and that this permitted Cardenas' economic heterodoxy, both in political and ideological terms. Evidence is provided to support two points. First, the changes in U.S. foreign policy that resulted from the enactment of the Good Neighbor Policy invested the Cardenas administration with greater autonomy in economics issues. Second, the new economic ideas derived from the New Deal facilitated and justified increased state intervention of Cardenas' government in the economy, using fiscal policy and direct sate participation in economic areas defined as strategic. In sum, this article demonstrates that Roosevelt's domestic and foreign policies generated a permissive environment for the enactment of the most important public policies during the administration of Cardenas, supporting the idea that U.S. internal and international actions directly affect the possibilities of policy implementation in Mexico.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, America, and Mexico
57253. The Bush Administration and the Future of Transatlantic Relations
- Author:
- Peter Trubowitz
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas
- Abstract:
- This paper, the first of a planned two-part analysis, examines the institutions of paramilitarism, death squads, and warlords in Latin America, with a focus on the case-studies of Mexico and Peru. It begins with an overview of the small comparative literature on paramilitary movements and death squads around the world, seeking to define and clarify the terminology. The literature on "warlordism" is then reviewed, and the similarities and distinctions between paramilitaries and warlords are considered. Lastly, I examine two case-studies that have not, as yet, received extended attention in the comparative literature: Mexico and Colombia. The paper concludes by summarizing the findings and charting a course for future investigations.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Foreign Policy, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, Colombia, Latin America, and Mexico
57254. Technology Parks - Concept and Organization
- Author:
- Rado Petkov, Rick Petree, and Eugene Spiro
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- EastWest Institute
- Abstract:
- This study presents a conceptual and organizational framework for establishing a pilot technology park and incubator in Bulgaria. Such a park might initially focus on the telecommunication and information technology (IT) sector (including software development), where the country displays strong, albeit under-utilized, technical talent. The park might encompass an export-oriented IT service firm and an incubator that will nurture hi-tech companies and help them commercialize innovative ideas and technologies. The study presents the experience of leading technology parks and incubators in the U.S., Israel, India and elsewhere and draws upon an on-going project of the Institute for EastWest Studies to establish a technology incubator in Budapest. The purpose of the paper is to identify the existing models of technology parks and to suggest organizational, legal and management solutions that can be applied in Bulgaria.
- Topic:
- International Relations, Development, and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Eastern Europe, and Bulgaria
57255. Banking and Finance Assistance
- Author:
- Eugene Spiro
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- EastWest Institute
- Abstract:
- The Banking and Finance Assistance Centre (BFAC) of the East West Institute is an independent, international centre whose mission is to provide assistance to financial sector leaders in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) and the former Soviet Union (FSU). BFAC was established in 1992 by the East West Institute in response to the need expressed by bank executives and finance officials in CEE for a centre to provide impartial, professional, technical advice and assistance in the course of designing and implementing reform initiatives. Supported, among others, by the EWI network and in particular the United States Agency for International Development, BFAC's projects also cover capital markets and pension reform and small- and medium-sized enterprise development.
- Topic:
- Development and Economics
- Political Geography:
- United States, Europe, and Eastern Europe
57256. Globalization and Democracy
- Author:
- Michael Hardt
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- The discourse of globalization has become dominant in recent years in an extraordinarily wide variety of contexts, equally on the left and on the right – from journalism to public policy discussions, from business strategy to labor organizing, and within the university across the social sciences and humanities. It is something like the discourse on postmodernism that blossomed about a decade earlier but seems to me even more extensive. This paper is an attempt to sort out some of the political positions taken within the discourse on globalization to help clarify the stakes in the globalization debates and the political consequences of the various theoretical and empirical claims. My assumption, in fact, is that political positions or desires dictate to a large extent the various analytical characterizations of globalization. What I will attempt, then, is to construct a typology of positions on globalization using the question of democracy as the first line of division. In other words, I will first divide theories in two groups: those who claim that globalization fosters democracy and those who maintain that globalization hinders or obstructs democracy. I will further divide these positions into arguments on the right and those on the left because this is a context in which I believe there remain very clear divisions between right and left, and it would be incoherent to group them together.
- Topic:
- Globalization, International Political Economy, and Political Economy
57257. Governing Global Finance: Financial derivatives, liberal states and transformative capacity
- Author:
- William D. Coleman
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute on Globalization and the Human Condition, McMaster University
- Abstract:
- Global finance is simultaneously one of the most globalized and one of the most esoteric sectors in the world economy. Within global finance, perhaps no activity is more esoteric and more difficult to understand than the buying and selling of derivatives. Their names are familiar perhaps – futures, options, forwards, swaps – but their nature is obscure. Simply put, derivatives are financial instruments that are used to hedge risk. If a Canadian corporation knows that it will want to buy 50 million US dollars on foreign exchange markets in three months time, it can arrange a fixed price for that purchase using a financial contract called a derivative. In doing so, it lowers the risk of the price of the currency changing drastically before it purchases the amounts it needs.
- Topic:
- Globalization, Government, International Trade and Finance, and Markets
- Political Geography:
- United States and Canada
57258. Inequality, Growth and Poverty in the Era of Liberalization and Globalization
- Author:
- Julius Court and Giovanni Andrea Cornia
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Eradicating poverty has become the international community's number one development objective. The overriding target—endorsed at the recent United Nations Millennium Summit by virtually all world leaders—is to reduce the incidence of income-poverty in developing countries from 30 percent to 15 percent between 1990 and 2015. The problem is that that further progress has stalled and the number of people living in poverty has remained at around 1.2 billion people—a fifth of the world's population.
- Topic:
- Economics, Globalization, International Cooperation, and Poverty
57259. Access to Land and Land Policy Reforms
- Author:
- Alaine de Janvry and Elisabeth Sadoulet
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- United Nations University
- Abstract:
- Who should have access to land? What is the optimum definition of property rights and use rights in each particular context? Is government intervention justified to influence who has access to land and under what conditions? These questions remain, in most developing countries, highly contentious. It is indeed the case that land is all too often misallocated among potential users and worked under conditions of property or user rights that create perverse incentives. As a consequence, investments to enhance productivity are postponed, and responses to market incentives are weakened; many poor rural households are unable to gain sufficient (or any) access to land when this could be their best option out of poverty; land remains under-used and often idle side-by-side with unsatisfied demands for access to land; land is frequently abused by current users, jeopardizing sustainability; and violence over land rights and land use is all too frequent. With population growth and increasing market integration for the products of the land, these problems tend to become more acute rather than the reverse. As a result, rising pressures to correct these situations have led many countries to reopen the question of access to land and land policy reforms. While large scale expropriative and redistributive land reforms are generally no longer compatible with current political realities, there exist many alternative forms of property and use rights that offer policy instruments to alter the conditions of access to land and land use. A rich agenda of land policy interventions thus exists to alter who has access to land and under what conditions for the purposes of increasing efficiency, reducing poverty, enhancing sustainability, and achieving political stability.Historically, the most glamorous path of access to land has been through statemanaged coercive land reform. In most situations, however, this is not the dominant way land was accessed by current users and, in the future, this will increasingly be the case. Most of the land in use has been accessed through private transfers, community membership, direct appropriation, and market transactions. There are also new types of state-managed programmes of access to land that do not rely on coercion. For governments and development agents (NGOs, bi-lateral and international development agencies), the rapid decline in opportunities to access land through coercive land reform should thus not be seen as the end of the role of the state and development agents in promoting and altering access to land. The following paths of access to land in formal or informal, and in collective or individualized ownership can, in particular, be explored (Figure 1): (1) Intra-family transfers such as inheritances, inter-vivo transfers, and allocation of plots to specific family members; (2) access through community membership and informal land markets; (3) access through land sales markets; and (4) access through specific non-coercive policy interventions such colonization schemes, decollectivization and devolution, and land market-assisted land reform. Access to land in use can also be achieved through land rental markets (informal loans, land rental contracts) originating in any of these forms of land ownership. Each of these paths of access to land has, in turn, implications for the way land is used. Each can also be the object of policy interventions to alter these implications of land use. The focus of this policy brief is to explore each of these paths and analyse how to enhance their roles in helping increase efficiency, reduce poverty, increase equality, enhance sustainability, and achieve political stability.
- Topic:
- Demographics, Economics, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States
57260. Humanitarian Action: The Conflict Connection
- Author:
- S. Neil MacFarlane
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- This monograph considers the impact of humanitarian action on recent armed conflicts. The proposition that humanitarian initiatives fuel conflict has been an important element of the critique of international responses to war-related need, constituting indeed a fundamental challenge to the humanitarian imperative. Concern about exacerbating conflict through humanitarian action may also reduce the flow of resources from donors to aid agencies. But the connection can also be positive. The view that humanitarian action can and should be designed to promote peace has influenced the programs of agencies operating in complex emergencies.
- Topic:
- Security, Human Rights, and International Organization
57261. Targeted Financial Sanctions: A Manual for Design and Implementation
- Author:
- Thomas J. Biersteker, Sue Eckert, Natalie Reid, and Peter Romaniuk
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs at Brown University
- Abstract:
- In recent years, the concept and strategy of targeted sanctions imposed by the United Nations Security Council under Chapter VII of the Charter of the United Nations, have been receiving increased attention. Practitioners and analysts generally agree that better targeting of such measures on the individuals responsible for the policies condemned by the international community, and the elites who benefit from and support them, would increase the effectiveness of sanctions, while minimizing the negative impact on the civilian population. The considerable interest in the development of targeted sanctions regimes has focused primarily on financial sanctions, travel and aviation bans, and embargoes on specific commodities such as arms or diamonds.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, Human Rights, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- United Nations
57262. Terrorism and America: Five Asia Pacific Perspectives
- Author:
- Terutomo Ozawa
- Publication Date:
- 12-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- Just over a decade ago, the phenomenal economic growth of Japan was admired and even feared. It had pursued a successful strategy of industry upgrading to catch up with the West, maximizing bank-based, state-directed financing. Ironically, the very institutional setup that was required for success eventually resulted in a devastating economic downturn. Japan remains languishing in a state of economic stagnation, but that may change: market forces are now driving Japan to carry out major reforms. A market-oriented business environment is crucial, and thus Japan is being propelled toward deregulation and institutional reform. In particular, its traditionally protected, inner-dependent sector must be opened to competition in order to improve efficiency, and obstacles to direct foreign investment must be eliminated. Although the process is a gradual one that has been further hampered by the slump in the U.S. economy, dramatic changes are in motion, creating promising roles and opportunities for foreign investors as well as potential for Japan to realize a new economic vitality.
- Topic:
- Religion and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Japan and Asia
57263. "Déjà vu all over again?" Why Dialogue Won't Solve the Kashmir Dispute
- Author:
- Arun R. Swamy
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- The intensification of a long-standing dispute between India and Pakistan over the state of Kashmir has become the cause of international concern. The stakes for these nuclear-armed rivals are high. Each views Kashmir as the validation of its national ideology; each fears that giving it up will result in serious domestic turmoil. Moreover, each country has plausible legal arguments for its claims along with a long history of grievances. The deep differences over Kashmir that divide the two countries have so far proven intractable, and following September 11 the movement toward confrontation accelerated. There has never been a more urgent need for international attention to Kashmir. While diplomatic engagement seems necessary for a resolution of this dispute, past results indicate that simply pressuring the two sides to talk may be disastrous. In order to avoid such results, any effort to intervene in this dispute must be undertaken with an awareness of how it evolved, why it has been so difficult to resolve, and what kinds of solutions to it might realistically be pursued.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution and Security
- Political Geography:
- South Asia, Asia, and Kashmir
57264. Terrorism and America: Five Asia Pacific Perspectives
- Author:
- Harry Bhaskara, Gautam Chikermane, Unaloto Ofa Kaukimoce, Amantha R. Perera, and Takeshi Yamashina
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- Three weeks after the terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, D.C., five journalists—from India, Fiji, Japan, Indonesia, and Sri Lanka—visiting the East-West Center on an exchange program accepted an invitation to write about the attacks and "America's War on Terrorism" from the perspective of their own country. Their responses are frank and sometimes anguished. "As global terrorism evolved into a beast out of control, America enjoyed the good life," writes a Sri Lankan. The United States has declared a war on terrorism but, an Indian asks, is it only because now "the grief pours out of American eyes"? In Japan, resentment over America's increasing "unilateralism" coexists with an unprecedented willingness to send troops overseas, says a writer for The Mainichi Newspapers. A Fijian broadcaster notes that calls for international action are accompanied by "unease over violent retaliation." The mixed emotions described by many are dramatically evident in predominantly Muslim Indonesia where, says a newspaper editor, anti-American demonstrations defied President Megawati's assurances of support for the United States.
- Topic:
- Religion and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Japan, America, Indonesia, India, Asia, and Sri Lanka
57265. Japan's Uneasy Citizens and the U.S.-Japan Alliance
- Author:
- Sheila A. Smith
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- Since the end of the Cold War, U.S. and Japanese policy-makers have successfully reaffirmed the U.S.-Japan security alliance. Yet, even as they have done so, a series of events has revealed a deeper ambivalence in Japan about the terms of the alliance. These events began with the 1995 rape of a school girl in Okinawa by U.S. servicemen, focusing attention on the social costs to residents of hosting U.S. forces. In 1999 came North Korea's launch of a missile over Japan, raising doubts among many Japanese about their alliance partner's ability to protect them. Most recently, the outcome of the 2001 sinking of the Ehime Maru training ship by a U.S. nuclear sub seemed to many to sacrifice Japanese citizens' interests to those of the U.S. military. Taken independently, these developments may seem temporary set-backs to policymakers, but together they suggest that there is increasing impatience among Japan's citizens with the way the alliance is managed. This disconnect between the public and policymakers could, if untended, have serious implications for the U.S.-Japan alliance.
- Topic:
- Security, Cold War, and Government
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, Asia, and North Korea
57266. Rough Waters in the South China Sea: Navigation Issues and Confidence-Building Measures
- Author:
- Ji Guoxing
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- East-West Center
- Abstract:
- In the wake of a collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter off the coast of Hainan in April 2001, verbal skirmishing between the United States and China revealed sharply different conceptions of jurisdictional and navigational principles. These differences persist and will likely be the cause of future conflicts; they have already caused strife among countries ringing the South China Sea. Central to these conflicts are the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) that extend 200 nm into the sea from coastal nations' baselines. Created by the UN Law of the Sea Convention, these zones attempt to accommodate coastal states' interest in controlling offshore resources and maritime powers' interests in maintaining freedom of navigation. But ambiguities in the Convention's language combined with coastal states' proliferating EEZ claims have created a tinderbox. The situation will remain volatile as long as the focus remains on jurisdictional disputes. But confidence-building efforts aimed more narrowly on practical navigation issues and managing “incidents at sea” offer a starting point for first bilateral and then multilateral agreements. In the wake of a collision between a U.S. spy plane and a Chinese jet fighter off the coast of Hainan in April 2001, verbal skirmishing between the United States and China revealed sharply different conceptions of jurisdictional and navigational principles. These differences persist and will likely be the cause of future conflicts; they have already caused strife among countries ringing the South China Sea. Central to these conflicts are the exclusive economic zones (EEZ) that extend 200 nm into the sea from coastal nations' baselines. Created by the UN Law of the Sea Convention, these zones attempt to accommodate coastal states' interest in controlling offshore resources and maritime powers' interests in maintaining freedom of navigation. But ambiguities in the Convention's language combined with coastal states' proliferating EEZ claims have created a tinderbox. The situation will remain volatile as long as the focus remains on jurisdictional disputes. But confidence-building efforts aimed more narrowly on practical navigation issues and managing “incidents at sea” offer a starting point for first bilateral and then multilateral agreements.
- Topic:
- Security, Energy Policy, and International Law
- Political Geography:
- United States, Japan, and China
57267. The Model of Ethnic Democracy
- Author:
- Sammy Smooha
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- The classical model of the liberal-democratic nation-state is on the decline in the West as a result of globalization, regionalization, multiculturalism, the institutionalization of universal minority rights and the rise of minority ethnonationalism. While western countries are decoupling the nation-state and slowly shifting toward multicultural democracy, some other countries are consolidating an alternative form of a democratic state that is identified with and subservient to a single ethnic nation. This type of political regime, "ethnic democracy," combines the extension of civil and political rights for all permanent residents with an institutionalized ethnic ascendancy of the majority group. The core ethnic nation controls the state and uses it to further its national interests and to grant its members a favored status. The non-core groups are accorded individual and collective rights and allowed to conduct a struggle for change, but treated as second-class citizens and placed under control.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, and Ethnic Conflict
- Political Geography:
- Eastern Europe
57268. The Effectiveness of the Exercise of Jurisdiction by the International Criminal Court: The Issue of Complementarity
- Author:
- Sammy Smooha and Susan Hannah Farbstein
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- The prevalence of collective violence and the agony of mass atrocity may prove to be the twentieth century's most distressing and enduring legacies. From Germany to Uganda, from Cambodia to Sierra Leone, from the Former Yugoslavia to Rwanda, the past hundred years are replete with examples of terrifying violations of human rights and humanitarian law committed against diverse groups of people. Limited attempts to unveil the truth about past horrors, to hold individuals responsible, and to deter future offenses have repeatedly proven inadequate. A dearth of satisfactory moral and legal responses to these crimes often left victims suffering without any sense of reconciliation, while perpetrators routinely enjoyed impunity rather than facing justice.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Democratization, Ethnic Conflict, Human Rights, and Humanitarian Aid
- Political Geography:
- Uganda, Eastern Europe, Yugoslavia, Germany, Cambodia, Sierra Leone, and Rwanda
57269. The Situation of Minorities in the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia: Towards an Implementation of the Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities
- Author:
- Matthias KÖNIG
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- On 11 May 2001 the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) acceded to the Council of Europe's FRAMEWORK CONVENTION FOR THE PROTECTION OF NATIONAL MINORITIES (FRAMEWORK CONVENTION hereinafter). The new government in Belgrade, in power since the democratic revolution in October 2000, has thereby declared its political intention to improve the situation of minorities by revising its legislation in accordance with the normative standards of the FRAMEWORK CONVENTION. By identifying general patterns of minority treatment in both legal standard-setting and factual practice in the FRY over the past decade, this study contributes to an analysis of primary concerns to be considered in the implementation of the FRAMEWORK CONVENTION.
- Topic:
- Democratization, Development, Ethnic Conflict, International Law, and Nationalism
- Political Geography:
- Eastern Europe and Yugoslavia
57270. ECMI Civil Society Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina: The Role of Annex 8 in Bridging Communities, Promoting Reconciliation, and Developing a Unique Identity in Bosnia and Herzegovina
- Author:
- Valery Perry
- Publication Date:
- 12-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- On Saturday, 15 December 2001, over 30 people gathered in Sarajevo to discuss the policy development and challenges of implementation related to Annex 8 of the General Framework Agreement for Peace (GFAP). The participants came from a broad range of relevant backgrounds, including the museum, culture, preservation, history, archaeology, architecture, civil society, and academic, governmental, and diplomatic fields. While full representation of the relevant government officials from the Federation of BiH (FbiH), Republika Srpska (RS), and Brcko District was expected, on the day before the workshop the representatives from the RS cancelled, and the representatives from Brcko failed to appear the day of the meeting.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, International Law, and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57271. ECMI Civil Society Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Workshop on Media Issues Working Session on Media Issues
- Author:
- Valery Perry
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- The ECMI Civil Society Project in Bosnia and Herzegovina aims to assist local actors in assuming responsibility for democratic governance in Bosnia and Herzegovina. They are being involved, with the assistance of international experts, in a process of reviewing existing policy on practical issues of concern to all communities in Bosnia and Herzegovina and of developing specific policy recommendations to further governance and civil society development within the framework set out by the Dayton Peace Accords (DPA).
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Peace Studies, and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57272. Kosovo/a Standing Technical Working Group: 5th and 6th Session Economic Development and Reconstruction
- Author:
- Robert Curis and Camille Monteux
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- The Standing Technical Working Group was established in March 2001 to address important issues of public policy in Kosovo/a at a technical level. It is composed of experts from Kosovo/a NGOs, from the parties and other civil society representatives. Its membership is fully interethnic and it prides itself on being able to conduct substantive debates about Kosovo/a in an interethnic way. In addition to reviewing technical aspects of policy, the group also formulates proposals and critical questions in relation to them. It then seeks to engage the international and Kosovo/a authorities on these issues. As the 5th and 6th session of the group were devoted to one common theme, it was found convenient to present the proceedings in one report.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Economics
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57273. Negotiation and Capacity Building in Montenegro, Workshop 1: Education and Curriculum Development
- Author:
- Florian Bieber
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- The ECMI project “Montenegro Negotiation and Capacity Building” was launched with the aim to establish a Track II informal negotiation process providing a forum for interethnic dialogue between the Serbian and Montenegrin communities, which includes minority communities from the Sandzak border region. Through a series of workshops, the project aims to help promote dialogue, identify issues of common concern and assist in delivering concrete benefits as well as building confidence between the communities involved. By focusing the debate on the concrete needs of these communities, the project seeks to facilitate thinking about future interethnic relations in a less charged atmosphere, irrespective of the deeper political questions on the future constitutional arrangements of the two republics.
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, and Regional Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57274. Kosovo/a Standing Technical Working Group, Fourth Meeting: Review of Activities
- Author:
- Graham Holliday and Camille Monteux
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- European Centre for Minority Issues (ECMI)
- Abstract:
- After a preliminary sketch of the overall aims of the project and the objective of the weekend's deliberations, the fourth meeting of the STWG was formally declared open. The first session was chaired by Dr Gylnaze Syla, who had also chaired an earlier plenary meeting of the Group and convened the Steering Committees on Health. The first session sought to re-examine questions pertaining to civil registration in Kosovo/a and, specifically, to address issue areas that had been highlighted by the Group in its constitutive session in March (identity documentation; registration of births, deaths and marriages; and vehicle registration).
- Topic:
- Civil Society, Development, Education, and Government
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57275. The Pugwash Policy Brief: US-Cuban Medical Cooperation: Effects of the US Embargo
- Author:
- Jeffrey Boutwell
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs
- Abstract:
- In 1995, the Pugwash Conferences and one of its cofounders, the physicist Sir Joseph Rotblat, shared the Nobel Peace Prize in recognition of their decades-long work to reduce the threat of nuclear war and ultimately abolish nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction. Beginning with its first international conference in Pugwash, Nova Scotia in 1957, the Pugwash Conferences have brought together influential scientists, scholars and public figures concerned with reducing the danger of armed conflict and seeking cooperative solutions for global problems.
- Topic:
- International Relations and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- United States
57276. Walk Softly and Look Ahead in Nuclear South Asia
- Author:
- Zia Mian
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Foreign Policy In Focus
- Abstract:
- Before September 11, South Asia's problems loomed large. The region, with over a billion people, a history of war, rising religious militancy, newly tested nuclear weapons, and a gettough mood, was on the brink of instability. Adding to South Asia's long list of troubles is the U.S. war against Osama bin Laden and the Taliban. Hasty U.S. actions could deepen the problems facing South Asia. Over the long term, the U.S. has the opportunity to foster regional stability—but only if it pursues a different set of policies in the region.
- Topic:
- Defense Policy, Nuclear Weapons, and War
- Political Geography:
- United States, South Asia, and Taliban
57277. U.S. Military Bases in Latin America and the Caribbean
- Author:
- John Lindsay-Poland
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Foreign Policy In Focus
- Abstract:
- The United States maintains a complex web of military facilities and functions in Latin America and the Caribbean, what the U.S. Southern Command (known as SouthCom) calls its "theater architecture." U.S. military facilities represent tangible commitments to an ineffective supply-side drug war and to underlying policy priorities, including ensuring access to strategic resources, especially oil. Much of this web is being woven through Plan Colombia, a massive, primarily military program to eradicate coca plants and to combat armed groups (mostly leftist guerrillas of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia). In the last five years, new U.S. bases and military access agreements have proliferated in Latin America, constituting a decentralization of the U.S. military presence in the region. This decentralization is Washington's way of maintaining a broad military foothold while accommodating regional leaders' reluctance to host large U.S. military bases or complexes.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, and Human Rights
- Political Geography:
- United States
57278. New Balkan Policy Needed
- Author:
- Robert D. Greenberg
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Foreign Policy In Focus
- Abstract:
- In the first months after the NATO-led Kosovo Force (KFOR) entered Kosovo in June 1999 and the Kosovar Albanian refugees returned to their homes, the minority Serbs and Gypsies became the victims of Albanian revenge attacks. The few Serbs who have remained in Kosovo live in scattered enclaves under the protection of KFOR troops. Nevertheless, sporadic violence has continued to erupt, including the bus bombing in February 2001 killing Serbs heading to a religious event. KFOR has been unable to stop the violence from spilling over Kosovo's borders to Macedonia and to Serbia's Presevo Valley region, which has a sizable ethnic Albanian minority. Meanwhile, Macedonia has closed its border with Kosovo, raising the likelihood of a serious economic crisis in Kosovo that could induce further instability there.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, and Ethnic Conflict
- Political Geography:
- United States, Eastern Europe, Kosovo, Balkans, and Albania
57279. Palestine and Israel
- Author:
- Stephen Zunes
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Foreign Policy In Focus
- Abstract:
- There is a widespread assumption that resolution of the conflict between Israelis and Palestinians is extremely complex and that the U.S. has been and still is the best hope for peace. The reality, however, is just the opposite.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Foreign Policy, International Law, Peace Studies, and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- United States, Middle East, Israel, and Palestine
57280. Iraq: 10 Years After Gulf War
- Author:
- Stephen Zunes
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Foreign Policy In Focus
- Abstract:
- Ten years after the Gulf War, U.S. policy toward Iraq continues to suffer from an overreliance on military solutions, an abuse of the United Nations and international law, and a disregard for the human suffering resulting from sanctions. Furthermore, Washington's actions have failed to dislodge Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein from power.
- Topic:
- Security, Foreign Policy, and Arms Control and Proliferation
- Political Geography:
- United States, Iraq, and Middle East
57281. Smart Sanctions: Restructuring UN Policy in Iraq
- Author:
- David Cortright, Alistair Millar, and George A. Lopez
- Publication Date:
- 04-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Fourth Freedom Forum
- Abstract:
- This study proposes a narrowly defined and tightly implemented set of smart sanctions focusing on weapons and military-related goods, as an alternative to the current faltering comprehensive sanctions regime. Such a modernized sanctions regime would need to be sustainable over the long term via the support of key UN Security Council members and frontline states. It would remain in effect until such time as Iraq complies fully with the relevant Security Council resolutions and fulfills its disarmament obligations.
- Topic:
- Security, Peace Studies, and United Nations
- Political Geography:
- Iraq and Middle East
57282. Fourth Freedom Forum Cosponsors Conference on Averting Nuclear Anarchy
- Author:
- Joseph Rotblat
- Publication Date:
- 03-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Fourth Freedom Forum
- Abstract:
- On March 31 the Fourth Freedom Forum joined with the Joan B. Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame, the Union of Concerned Scientists, the Lawyers Alliance for World Security, and the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists to sponsor a one-day conference at the University of Notre Dame on the crisis in nu;clear arms control and the need for greater efforts to reduce and eliminate nuclear weapons. The conference featured a keynote address by Nobel Prize laureate Dr. Joseph Rotblat. Other speakers included Rev. Theodore M. Hesburgh, C.S.C.; former ambassador Thomas Graham, MIT research fellow Lisbeth Gronlund, former assistant secretary; of Defense Sarah Sewall, and Forum president David Cortright. Remarks of some of the speakers follow.
- Topic:
- Security, Arms Control and Proliferation, Nuclear Weapons, and Peace Studies
- Political Geography:
- United States
57283. Terrorism: Threat and Responses
- Author:
- Jean-Louis Bruguière
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
- Abstract:
- Along with the highly developed forms of organized crime, can terrorism be ranked in the category of the tough challenges which the world has to face? This question is worth asking, as too often the perception of that threat is a faint one.
- Topic:
- Security, Defense Policy, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57284. The European Union as a Security Actor in the Mediterranean
- Author:
- Fred Tanner and Joanna Schemm
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- The Geneva Centre for Security Policy
- Abstract:
- The publication of the proceedings of the GCSP workshop on the European Union and the Mediterranean is timely in more ways than one. First of all, the sudden emergence of European Security and Defence Policy from 1999 onwards has generated the need to examine the security and defence dimension of the Euro-Mediterranean partnership. The partnership was obviously not established in connection with ESDP in mind – if only because ESDP did not exist yet at the time of the launching of the Barcelona process – but the Barcelona process clearly has security and defence implications and ESDP necessarily has a Mediterranean dimension. Secondly, and more tentatively, the ESDP is likely to increase its focus on the Mediterranean as the wars of succession in the former Socialist Federation of Yugoslavia are progressively brought to a close. Not unnaturally, the conflicts which have worked their way down the length of post-Tito Yugoslavia from Slovenia in June 1991 to Macedonia ten years later, have been the foremost security and defence concern of the members of the European Union. These wars have not yet played themselves out, as events in Macedonia demonstrate; nor is it likely that European forces deployed in Bosnia and Kosovo will be withdrawn anytime soon. By the time the ESDP Rapid Reaction Force is ready in 2003, the European strategic spotlight may well have shifted from the Balkan doorstep to the broader Mediterranean arena. Thirdly, a number of substantial material changes are due to occur within the European Union during the next two to four years. At the military end of the spectrum, we have the 2003 goal for the Rapid Reaction Force, for which a strategic rationale will need to be found above and beyond the important but exceedingly vague statement that it is supposed to fulfil the Petersberg tasks, “including the most demanding” to use official European Council language. In institutional terms, the EU is preparing itself for the rendez-vous of 2004, which may or may not be a constitutional convention. Given the widely recognised need to give greater clarity and accountability to the EU's institutions – and this is a requirement which appears to be shared by Europhiles and Euroskeptics alike – chances are that this will not simply be an inter-governmental conference of the sort which led to the Amsterdam and Nice treaties. And then, of course, we have enlargement, which in EU terms will not only mesh in with the institutional debate, but which will also broaden the cast of players involved in the Euro-Med process. This applies even more to NATO enlargement: with something akin to a “Big Bang” beginning to take shape as NATO's current members prepare for the 2002 Prague Summit, countries such as Romania and Bulgaria will give a greater “Southern” tilt to the Alliance, before joining the European Union at a subsequent stage.
- Topic:
- Security and Defense Policy
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57285. Macroeconomic Policy and Sustainability
- Author:
- Jonathan Harris
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The trend in mainstream economic thought about macroeconomic policy has been towards minimalism. In the optimistic Keynesian phase of the 1960's, it was assumed that both fiscal and monetary policy were effective tools for macroeconomic management. But the influence of monetarist and New Classical critiques has led to a gradual erosion of theoretical support for activist government policy. First fiscal policy fell by the wayside, perceived as too slow and possibly counterproductive in its impacts. Then New Classical and rational expectations critiques suggested that even monetary policy was ineffective. Thus the role of government policy has been reduced to a cautious effort not to make things worse -- in effect a return to an economics of laissez- faire.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, International Political Economy, and International Trade and Finance
57286. Dirt is in the Eye of the Beholder: The World Bank Air Pollution Intensities for Mexico
- Author:
- Kevin Gallagher, Francisco Aguayo, and Ana González
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- This paper identifies a number of errors and inconsistencies in a series of air pollution intensities for Mexico that were recently created by the World Bank. Because these data are being used to conduct public policy analysis and advice for Mexico and countries at similar levels of development, knowledge of the limits of these data is of utmost importance. In addition to identifying the problems with these data, this paper makes a series of adjustments to offer a corrected dataset. These newly corrected data are available on the World Bank's New Ideas in Pollution Regulation (NIPR) web page.
- Topic:
- Economics, Environment, and International Trade and Finance
- Political Geography:
- Mexico
57287. Agriculture in a Global Perspective
- Author:
- Jonathan Harris
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- In the twenty-first century, it is evident that world agricultural systems will have to supply sufficient food for a population somewhere between 7.5 and 12 billion. Projections for world agriculture in the first half of the twenty-first century very widely, largely depending on assumptions about yield growth. An investigation of the patterns of yield growth for major cereal crops offers evidence that the pattern is logistic, implying that an upper limit to yields is being approached. This pattern is consistent with ecological limits on soil fertility, water availability, and nutrient uptake. It is also evident that current agricultural production is imposing serious strains on ecosystems, with widespread soil degradation, water overdraft and pollution, and ecological impacts such as loss of biodiversity and the proliferation of resistant pest species.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Development, Economics, and Environment
57288. Community Control in a Global Economy: Lessons from Mexico's Economic Integration Process
- Author:
- Eliza Waters and Tim Wise
- Publication Date:
- 02-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- The North American Free Trade Agreement appeared to promise economic growth for Mexico and improved living conditions for its people. While the Mexican economy has recovered significantly from its post-NAFTA collapse, there is mounting evidence that many of the pre-NAFTA warnings of worsening poverty and deteriorating environmental conditions were true, if exaggerated. However one interprets the statistics, there is little doubt that the economic integration process, which began a full decade before NAFTA took effect, has created a significant restructuring of the Mexican economy, with some of the country's most vulnerable residents facing the harshest conditions.
- Topic:
- Agriculture, Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
- Political Geography:
- North America
57289. Civil Economy and Civilized Economics: Essentials for Sustainable Development
- Author:
- Neva Goodwin
- Publication Date:
- 01-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Global Development and Environment Institute at Tufts University
- Abstract:
- This essay will consider the relevance of the social sciences - especially economics - to the foundations of sustainable development. Looming environmental crises have served as a prime motivating force for reevaluating fundamental principles. In particular, the concept of sustainability, carrying with it clear requirements for values, goals and ethics, has begun to reshape economics. The broadest conception of sustainability is found if we understand sustainable development to mean Socially And Environmentally Just And Sustainable development - "SAEJAS development".
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, Globalization, International Trade and Finance, and Political Economy
57290. Postcommunism as a Historical Episode of State-Building: A Reversed Tillyan Perspective
- Author:
- Venelin I. Ganev
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This analytical essay offers a historical-sociological interpretation of a widely discussed and yet under-analyzed phenomenon that transpired in the former Soviet world after the collapse of communist regimes: the “weakness of the state.” After a critical survey of currently dominant approaches to this problem—approaches that conjure up the ideological commitment of global and local “neo-liberal” elites—I present an alternative explanation of the crisis of state capacity in postcommunism. The analytical matrix proposed in the essay—I call it “reversed Tillyan perspective”—rests on two general presuppositions: first, that the process of reconfiguring state structures in postcommunism is shaped by the distinct structural legacy of state socialism, and, second, that this legacy may be best comprehended if we approach it with the analytical tools provided by the historical sociology of state formation, and in particular Charles Tilly's work on state building in Western Europe. In the final section of the essay, I explore the broader implication of the analysis of postcommunist “state weakness” for the study of state structures in the modern worlds.
- Topic:
- Democratization
- Political Geography:
- Europe
57291. Nongovernmental Terrorism in Latin America: Re-examining Old Assumptions
- Author:
- Andreas Feldmann and Maiju Perälä
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- For years nongovernmental terrorism in Latin America was considered to be an epiphenomenon of the Cold War, and consequently explained in terms of that war. The persistence of terrorism throughout the region in the 1990s not only has indicated that many of our assumptions concerning the causes of terrorism were misleading, but also has lead scholars to reexamine the phenomenon of nongovernmental political violence. This paper investigates the validity of a number of hypotheses recently explored in the literature by applying a pooled time series cross section regression analysis to data from seventeen Latin American countries between 1980 and 1995. Findings indicate that nongovernmental terrorist acts in Latin America are more likely to occur in countries characterized by widespread state human rights violations. Likewise, evidence is found that nongovernmental terrorism in the region tends to be more prevalent in countries characterized by electoral and associational liberties than by restrictive dictatorships. Association between economic performance or structural economic conditions and the incidence of terrorism is not substantiated by the findings.
- Topic:
- Cold War, Democratization, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- South America and Latin America
57292. Transforming Labor-Based Parties in Latin America: The Argentine Justicialista Party In Comparative Perspective
- Author:
- Steven Levitsky
- Publication Date:
- 07-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- This article seeks to explain the success or failure of Latin American labor-based parties in adapting to the contemporary challenges of economic liberalization and working class decline. It focuses on party organization, and specifically, on informal and under-institutionalized organizational forms. The article's central claim is that under-institutionalized organizational structures may facilitate party adaptation in a context of environmental crisis. Thus, mass populist parties, which lack the bureaucratic constraints that tend to inhibit change in better institutionalized labor-based parties, may possess a distinctive advantage in the neoliberal period. Although these parties' deep roots in society provide them with relative electoral stability, other populist legacies, such as fluid internal structures, non-bureaucratic hierarchies, and centralized leaderships, yield a high degree of strategic flexibility. The article applies this argument to the case of the Argentine Justicialista Party (PJ), a mass populist party that adapted with striking success in the 1980s and 1990s. In the coalitional realm, the poorly institutionalized nature of the PJ's party-union linkage allowed reformers to easily dismantle traditional mechanisms of labor participation, which contributed to the PJ's rapid transformation from a labor-dominated party into a patronage-based party. In the programmatic realm, the PJ's non-bureaucratic hierarchy and under-institutionalized leadership bodies provided President Carlos Menem with substantial room for maneuver in carrying out a neoliberal strategy that, while at odds with Peronism's traditional program, was critical to the party's survival as a major political force.
- Topic:
- Government and Politics
- Political Geography:
- South America and Latin America
57293. The Taxing Task of Taxing Transnationals
- Author:
- Thomas A. Gresik
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Kellogg Institute for International Studies
- Abstract:
- Financial and real investment flexibility, tax competition, and superior economic information by transnationals both creates a rationale for corporate income taxation and limits the effectiveness of such taxation. While these factors have led to a variety of transnational tax policies, such as deferral, double taxation, apportionment, and trade rules, very few of these institutional features have been integrated into tax competition and agency models. This paper shows how the integration of investment flexibility, tax competition, and agency issues is crucial to our understanding of corporate tax policies.
- Topic:
- Economics, Government, and International Trade and Finance
57294. Privateering and National Defense: Naval Warfare for Private Profit
- Author:
- Larry J. Sechrest
- Publication Date:
- 09-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Independent Institute
- Abstract:
- Hans-Hermann Hoppe has argued that “the idea of collective security is a myth that provides no justification for the modern state” and “all security is and must be private” (1999, 27). Furthermore, Hoppe makes it abundantly clear that when referring to security he means protection against not only the small-scale depredations of the common criminal but also the massive aggressions perpetrated by nation-states. The claim that all legitimate defense functions can and must be privately supplied flies in the face of certain economic doctrines that are almost universally accepted. Almost all economists declare that there are some goods or services which will be provided in suboptimal quantities--or not provided at all--by private, profit-seeking firms. These “public goods” allegedly bring benefits to all in the society, whether or not any given individual bears his or her fair share of their cost. This “free riding” by some persons diminishes the profit incentive motivating private suppliers. Therefore, to make sure that such highly-valued goods are provided, the government serves as the principal, or often the only, supplier and taxes all the citizens in order to finance the production and distribution of the good.
- Topic:
- Government, Industrial Policy, and National Security
57295. Constitutional Causes for Technological Leadership: Why Europe?
- Author:
- Jurgen G. Backhaus
- Publication Date:
- 08-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Independent Institute
- Abstract:
- In a paper circulated towards the end of 1997 under the title Why Europe?, Gordon Tullock poses a simple question and provides a tentative, yet provocative answer. The question is why the technological take off took place in Europe and in the 19th century when well into the 18th century other areas of the world, and notably China, looked much better poised for technological and scholarly leadership than Europe. His tentative answer turns on the constitutional composition of the landscape of political entities in Europe. This essay tries to provide some further underpinnings to aspects of Gordon Tullock's preliminary answer.
- Topic:
- Industrial Policy and Science and Technology
- Political Geography:
- China and Europe
57296. Nation of Origin Bias and the Enforcement of Immigration Laws by the Immigration and Naturalization Service
- Author:
- Jim F. Couch, Brett King, William H. Wells, and Peter M. Williams
- Publication Date:
- 06-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Independent Institute
- Abstract:
- The Immigration and Naturalization Service (INS) is charged with the task of administering citizenship requests, providing for the proper documentation of temporary foreign workers, and apprehending illegal aliens. The apprehension of illegals, the most controversial duty of the INS, has placed the agency squarely in the headlines. The recent raid to seize Elian Gonzalez from his Miami relatives brought opprobrium upon the agency. The action, which involved 131 INS agents – some heavily armed – resulted in calls of discrimination from Miami's Cuban community. This paper examines the inconsistent enforcement patterns of the INS and attempts to determine what factors may account for INS activity. We conjecture that the agency is influenced by political pressure and may practice discrimination against certain illegals.
- Topic:
- Government and Migration
- Political Geography:
- United States and Cuba
57297. ICAR Newsletter, Volume 13, Number 1
- Author:
- Dennis J.D. Sandole, Sandra I. Cheldelin, Sara Cobb, Ho-Won Jeong, Christopher Mitchell, Richard Rubenstein, Abdusabur Abdusamadov, Giselle Huamani Ober, John W. Holman, Catalina Rojas, Ellen Kabcenell Wayne, and Louis Kriesberg
- Publication Date:
- 12-2001
- Content Type:
- Policy Brief
- Institution:
- Institute for Conflict Analysis and Resolution at George Mason University
- Abstract:
- On Aug. 15, 2001, ICAR welcomed our new director, Sara Cobb, by sending her to represent our institute at a threeday combined retreat of the President's Council (comprising the president and senior staff members, deans, and directors) and George Mason's Board of Directors. Within days we learned that her energy and enthusiasm for ICAR's agenda was contagious and welcome. With academic year 2001–2002 beginning the following week, she has hardly had time to catch her breath.
- Topic:
- Conflict Resolution, Security, Human Rights, and Peace Studies
57298. Improving Upon Nature: Creating Competitive Advantage in Ceramic Tile Clusters in Italy, Spain, and Brazil
- Author:
- Jorg Meyer-Stamer, Silene Seibel, and Claudio Maggi
- Publication Date:
- 10-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Institute for Development and Peace
- Abstract:
- This paper shows how using a combination of a cluster and a global value chain approach helps to assess local competitive strategies and upgrading possibilities. The global ceramic tile industry is dominated by two industrial clusters, Sassuolo in Italy and Castellón in Spain, which are not only dominating tile production in their respective countries and in Europe but are also the global technology leaders and the leading exporters. The Italian tile manufacturers are closely linked with capital goods manufacturers, the Spanish with producers of glazing materials. The equipment and materials producers drive technical change and innovation in tile design, whereas the tile manufacturers try to establish a competitive advantage in particular by innovating in downstream activities: training tilers, establishing diversified brands for different sales channels, and going into direct sales. Analyzing the value chain, from inputs and capital goods to final sales, offers new insights into scope and alternatives of local upgrading. It also helps to reassess the competitiveness of tile clusters in the developing world. This is done for Brazil's leading cluster which is located in Santa Catarina. Tile firms there can benefit from the fierce rivalry among Italian capital goods producers and among Spanish producers of glazing materials, as well as the rivalry between Italy and Spain. They are technology followers. However, having to deal with a volatile and very competitive market, they are innovative in downstream activities, experimenting with concepts which are not yet used by Italian or Spanish manufacturers.
- Topic:
- Development, Economics, and Peace Studies
- Political Geography:
- Europe, Brazil, Spain, and Italy
57299. Between Dialogue and Partnership: What North-South Relationship Across the Mediterranean?
- Author:
- Roberto Aliboni
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- In the post-September 11th evolution a new transatlantic dimension is emerging based in the struggle against terrorism in a global perspective. Terrorism is identified as today's central threat to international security and co-operation.
- Topic:
- Security, International Cooperation, and Terrorism
- Political Geography:
- United States and Europe
57300. Human Rights and Regional Co-Operation in the Caucasus: The Role of Georgia
- Author:
- Ettore Greco and Marco Gestri
- Publication Date:
- 11-2001
- Content Type:
- Working Paper
- Institution:
- Istituto Affari Internazionali
- Abstract:
- The first session of the seminar focused on “Georgia and the European System for the Protection of Human Rights”. Analysis of the topics to be discussed within this framework was preceded by some introductory remarks by Ambassador Maurizio Moreno, Department of Political Affairs of the Italian Ministry for Foreign Affairs. Ambassador Moreno gave a concise but stimulating overview of the political context in which Georgia's international relations must be considered. First, he emphasised the clear will of the majority of the Georgian people and of Georgian institutions to strengthen ties with European and Euro-Atlantic organisations. Then he drew the attention of the Georgian participants to the fact that there is a firm determination on the part of the European Union and its member states to consider Georgia a full member of the European family of nations; this has been proven, in particular, by Georgia's accession to the Council of Europe.
- Topic:
- Human Rights and International Cooperation
- Political Geography:
- Europe and Georgia