Democratization and party development in Eastern Europe

Awareness of the problems of prediction has come to the fore with the ending of the cold war and uncertainty has become a major feature of areas affected by it, not least the countries of eastern Europe in relation to the development of democratic institutions and practices. Party development is a central part of this process and one recent attempt to theorize it directs attention, rather like the approach taken by modern chaos theory, to the persistent influence of starting conditions and a particular blend of lightly structured growth from a more tightly coordinated set of preconditions. This framework is applied to the complex developments in post‐communist Poland, and three families of political parties are identified by applying Panebianco's genetic model. The components of this model are, it is argued, quite useful in accounting for the relative success of post‐communist parties and the failure of the political formations that derived from the previously authoritative Solidarity movement.     

European experience for East Asian integration: ideas, national interests, and the international circumstance

This paper traces the possibility of East Asian integration through comparison with the early stage of European integration on three different levels: ideas, national interests, and international circumstance. Judging from the European experience, ideas always come first, then national interest contests, and eventually the international circumstance conditions the context. I compare the multilateral approach in Europe with the imperial hegemony competition in East Asia, Adenauer’s regionalization policy in Europe with the Yoshida line of Westernization detouring from Asia, and the US and Russia’s different roles in the two regions as external forces constraining the international order. My conclusion for the future of East Asia is located somewhere between views of procedural divergence and fundamental skepticism. I worry about integration for the sake of integration in which regional integration is presupposed as inherently good. Such discourse will easily be deteriorated and such a blind community simply collapses when circumstances change. For these reasons, there needs to be an adequate discussion regarding for what, by whom, and through which method integration is achieved.     

Political actors,preferences and election rule re-design in Russia and Ukraine

Institutional designers, international organizations and post-Soviet political actors have directed considerable attention to the design and conduct of elections in postcommunist states. This article explores the nature of electoral system re-design by investigating the motives and interactions of legislators, parties and presidents. Following the veto players literature, the analysis focuses on the determinants of policy stability and change. The process of institutional re-design is evaluated in two cases: the successful introduction of the Law on Political Parties in Russia and unsuccessful attempts at major election reform in Ukraine. The article shows that the outcomes of policy reform processes in these 'superpresidential' systems were not solely determined by presidential preferences. Rather, to fully understand election system re-design, it is critical to evaluate the preferences of all relevant veto players.     

European integration and lessons for China

This paper compares the European Union and the People’s Republic of China by viewing them primarily as conglomerates of smaller constituents, each with their own political and economic significance in relations with their respective political centres. While this is a perspective that is more easily applied to the EU given that each of its members enjoys sovereignty and also the Union’s rather short history, Chinese area studies have only recently begun viewing China as a sum of its parts. The present study while conscious of the huge differences in the historical development and present realities of both the EU and China, posits that the similarities in the centre-constituent as well inter-constituent relationships developing in both the EU and China allow for important lessons to be drawn. A key focus is the differentiated set of relationships developing between Brussels and the latest entrants to the EU and between the older and newer members of the EU. In China, too, the nature of relationships between the central government and the better-developed coastal provinces is different from those that Beijing has with the central or western provinces, with implications also for the relationships among these different sets of provinces themselves. The tensions and charges of unfair treatment seen in the accessions of the Central and Eastern European nations to the EU, have an echo in the similar complaints that have been coming from the interior provinces of China since the beginning of economic reforms in that country, and perhaps, provide pointers to the future direction of the development of centre-province and inter-provincial relationships in China.     

试析欧盟东扩对中东欧新成员国政党制度的影响--兼评政党制度中的欧洲怀疑论

在国内外学术界 ,关于欧盟东扩对中东欧新成员国政党制度影响的研究都是一个相对较新的课题。本文试图利用现有资料 ,揭示这一影响的突出方面 :多党制的巩固和各主要政党 ,尤其是执政党在入盟问题上的高度一致 ;欧洲怀疑论在政党制度中的出现和发展。前者是欧盟东扩的最为显著的影响 ,几乎贯穿了整个东扩进程 ;后者随东扩的完成 ,可能会出现逐渐加强的趋势 ,但目前 ,持欧洲怀疑论的政党仍处于本国政党制度的外围 ,对所在国欧洲政策的制定和欧盟未来的发展影响有限。     

Youth culture and European integration in Germany: back to European basics?

Using data of a representative survey among young people in Germany, the present article detects significant shifts in attitudes towards European integration over a relatively short time-span. Surveying these changing attitudes, the article explores the idea that these changing attitudes could signal more than mere short-term reactions to singular political events, but rather point to a reorientation towards the initial conceptualization of European integration as a peace project. Gudrun Quenzel is Lecturer at the Institute for Sociology at the University of Duisburg-Essen. Mathias Albert is Professor of Political Science at Bielefeld University.     

How European integration is perceived in Asia

From modern Asian academicians point of view European integration is multidisciplinary phenomenon. It is considered as such simply because those educators view the phenomenon from various perspectives e.g. trade and business, economics, security, law, politics, social and other relevant issues. Even though focal points of interest among Asian educators are diverse in nature but they can, perhaps, be categorised into following groups: The first group pertains to economics interest, particularly for those who wish to explain and analyze the effect of economic integration within and outside the EU. Equally interested are those who are active in the subject of world economy such as global trade and commerce. They view the EU as world economic major player similar to USA, Japan and newly emerging economy such as China–more or less as competitors between each other. The second group has a political motivation and views the EU as the most successful modern political integration. Particularly those academicians who wish to learn from the process of political integration, e.g. regionalism and enlargement of the EU. Pertaining to this group are international relations people, who, in some cases, shifted their focus to the EU as a result of the initiatives of the institutions of the European Union itself. They are also interested in the true understanding and relations among the EUs member and non-member countries. Other international relations concern such as the extent to which security and defense are becoming issues in the EU falls within this group as well. The last and perhaps the largest group views the EU social order through the method of comparative analysis among civilized societies. Comparative studies of the EU social structure and its development with other societies may bring solutions to various social problems. This group hopes to discover the strengths and weaknesses of the societal aspect of integration and hope that experiences gained through comparative analyses such as comparative law, comparative government and its welfare system, political economy of regional integration, the true effect of the acquis communautaire, etc. would contribute to new knowledge.     

Civil wars,party politics and the consolidation of regimes in twentieth century Europe

The present article explores how winners' and losers' strategies for competition influence the possibility of democratization after civil war. Civil wars have been pivotal events in many states, but there has been little analysis of how they affect democratization. Since most have been won by the political right in twentieth century Europe one expects a correlation between civil war and the imposition of authoritarian solution to political conflicts. However, an analysis of five civil wars shows a wide variety in the patterns of political dominance achieved by the winners, ranging from total clampdown in Spain to the winners relinquishing power, as in Ireland. In between, Finland, Greece and Hungary combined various degrees of open competition with restrictions on the losers. In effect democratization can be as likely an outcome of civil war as regression to authoritarianism. Explaining the variation in outcomes of the five cases is the objective of this article.     

政治文化视阈下的俄罗斯与欧洲关系

俄罗斯与欧洲关系深受政治文化的影响和制约.政治文化可分为观念性文化和结构性文化,观念性文化在政治文化中处于核心地位,决定结构性文化发展的方向.俄罗斯与欧洲政治文化中,结构性文化存在着相似之处,但是观念性文化具有较大的冲突,这也决定了俄罗斯不可能真正融入到欧洲,唯一现实的战略目标就是做一个与西方平等的伙伴.     

Cosmopolitan democracy and the national identity question in Europe and East Asia

This paper seeks to apply the idea of cosmopolitan democracyto the question of national identity in a comparative contextin the European Union and East Asia. The application of theidea of cosmopolitan democracy to East Asia is constrained bya number of factors, and hence cannot be understood as a universalconcept, but rather as a contingent regional phenomenon thatis dependent on certain conditions. The paper concludes thatEast Asia will find its own approach to the question of nationalidentity and that this has been demonstrated to some extentby China's handling of Hong Kong.     

The new impetus towards economic integration between Europe and Asia

With the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union the large economic space of the Eurasian super-continent has also become part of the world-wide globalization process. How this process of integration of Eurasia is proceeding in key areas of cross-continental linkages is of great importance for the future of the region and for the future of the World as a whole. One of the key questions will be whether the regional and global institutions can provide adequate support for this integration process.This paper was presented as a keynote speech at The Fourteenth OSCE Economic Forum in Vienna on 23 January 2006. It draws on a longer paper by (Linn and Tiomkin in press).The authors are, respectively, Executive Director of the Wolfensohn Initiative at The Brookings Institution, Washington, DC, USA, and MBA and MPA/ID candidate at Harvard University. Johannes Linn served as Vice President for Europe and Central Asia at the World Bank from 1996 to 2003.

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