The International Dimensions of Ethnic Conflict

Abstract

In recent years, the Abu Nidal Organization (ANO) has been politically marginalized. The current Gulf crisis may serve to reinvigorate the ANO as a significant actor in the Middle East. As an organization with its raison d'être rooted in violence, there is a paucity of literature concerning the ANO. It is, therefore, a useful exercise to collect and collate available information to construct a study of this organization.     

Peace Building in Violent Conflict: Israeli-Palestinian Post-Oslo People-to-People Activities

This article deals with peace-building activities in the context of the intractable conflict between Israelis and Palestinians. Scores of people-to-people projects were conducted after the September 1993 signing of the Oslo peace accords, but these projects did not seem to prevent the collapse of the peace process and the re-emergence of severe violence between the sides in late September 2000. However, evidence from the field indicates that peace-building activities are still continuing. This article will describe peace-building activities both before and after September 2000, discuss their effectiveness, and define their relevance in the ongoing violent conflict between the sides.     

Middle Eastern terrorism in Europe: Trends and prospects

Abstract

Europe has been the preferred operational area for Middle Eastern terrorist groups—some 418 attacks from 1980–1989. Unlike European Marxist revolutionary or separatist terrorist groups, the Middle Eastern groups present Europe with a regional security problem. The most dangerous element in this Middle Eastern terrorist threat is the state‐sponsored activities of Iran, Libya, Syria, and Iraq. These countries provided the fuel for a decade of Middle Eastern terrorist bloodshed in Europe. Given the problems of solving the various political conflicts and feuds in the Middle East and the continuing attractiveness of Europe as a substitute battlefield for Middle Eastern terrorist elements, the threat of Middle Eastern terrorist activity in Europe should continue into the 1990s.     

腐败与东欧共产党的衰败

东欧各国党自身存在的问题是导致东欧剧变的多种因素中的一个重要方面.各种腐败现象的滋生和蔓延腐蚀了党的肌体,削弱了党与群众的联系,影响了党的纯洁性、先进性、感召力和战斗力.     

Knowledge-Sharing Subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe

This paper investigates reverse knowledge transfer of foreign multinational subsidiaries in Central and Eastern Europe (Czech Republic, Poland and Hungary) in the light of the current political and economic transformations of these former communist countries. The study examines whether foreign subsidiaries in the region share their knowledge base with their sister-subsidiaries and parent company, and the role of various factors in this knowledge sharing. These factors include subsidiary initiative, subsidiary autonomy, local dynamism and corporate embeddedness. A proprietary dataset is used for statistical analysis.     

Europeanisation and post-peasant populism in Eastern Europe

On the basis of an examination of rural social structure, traditionalist narratives and an agrarian imaginary resulting from uneven development, this article investigates the forms of political mobilisation which materialise in East European politics as ‘post-peasant populism’. Focusing on grassroots mobilisation, an analysis of the annual Corpus Christi ritual in the city of Przemy?l, south-east Poland, serves as the basis for an exploration of the theme of socially sensitive post-peasant populism as an alternative to post-socialist capitalism. This populism relies on the politicisation of the rural past and is currently influenced by ‘Europeanisation’.     

National Sentiments in Eastern and Western Europe

In a world of presumed nation-states nation has been, and still is, an intrinsic part of political legitimization. The claim of nationality has played an important role in such legitimization for the last two centuries. More than this, it has also constituted a fundamental collective entity for an individual's understanding of who they are in relation to those who are perceived as not sharing the nationality. This is nothing new, but in an era of globalization we are witnessing the rebirth of nationalism and nationality (Castells, 1997), where the power struggle over the political agenda will increasingly be about the struggle for the right to identity and the risks of exclusion from the national community. Even if this is the case it stands clear that everyday nationalism and nationalist struggles take different forms in different parts of the world. It has often been claimed that there are two types of nationalism prevalent in different parts of Europe, one in the so-called West and one in the so-called East. Kohn (1945) claimed that the rise of nationalism in the West was a political occurrence based on the democratic creation of the modern nation-state whereas the rise of nationalism in Eastern Europe was of a more backward type drawing its power from the struggle for cultural hegemony. The legacy of Kohn is taken up by Smith (1986; 1991) in his classical division of civic and ethnic national identities and nationalism, claiming that the former is a Western product and the latter mainly an Eastern one (see also Ignatieff, 1993). More recently, White (2000) claims that national identities in Eastern Europe have been strongly influenced by romanticism. The emphasis on ethnic nationalism in Eastern Europe not only is related to historical nation formation, but also has been claimed to be of great importance in the postcommunist era (Lovell, 1999). It is widely realized that national identities and nationalism differ within the West as well as within the East, but it is still assumed that there are fundamental differences between Western and Eastern European nation formation and that these have influenced the types of national identity and nationalism prevalent in the different geographical areas. For example, Sugar (1969) claims that there are differences between the Eastern European states; nonetheless, there are also commonalties that make them differ from Western European states.