Monetary policy and overinvestment in East Asia and Europe

The paper analyzes the role of monetary policy for cyclical movements of investment and asset markets in East Asia and Europe based on a Mises-Hayek overinvestment framework. It is shown how the gradual global decline of interest rates has triggered wandering overinvestment cycles in Japan, Southeast Asia, and China. Similarly, it is shown how a one-size monetary policy within the European Monetary Union has not preserved the European Monetary Union from idiosyncratic economic development and crisis because of uncoordinated fiscal policies. With monetary policy crisis management being argued to impede financial and economic restructuring, a timely exit from ultra-expansionary monetary policies is recommended for both East Asia and Europe to reconstitute economic stability and growth.     

Democratic consolidation and convergence in Southern Europe: The Italian case

In the analysis of democratic consolidation(s) in Southern Europe the emphasis has been on three main factors: the relevance of institutional rules, the scope and activities of parties (and party elites), and the establishment of certain relationships between institutions, parties and interests, connected to the size of the public sector of the economy. From the varied combinations of these factors different consolidations result: an elite‐based consolidation (Spain), a party‐based one (Italy), a state‐based one (Greece), and also a mixed party‐state model (Portugal). Our analysis also suggests the emergence of different types of democratic regime, mainly characterized by (i) either a ‘chancellor’ democracy or a parliamentary arrangement; (ii) either a pivotal or a secondary role for parties; and (iii) either a large or small public economic sector.

Recently the economic crisis, the resulting problems, and discontent arising from other causes, have brought about change in these democracies. The main transformations include the weakening of parties vis‐à‐vis other actors, the shrinking of both the public economic sector and the welfare institutions and, as a result, the prospect of greater autonomy for civil society. Thus, partially new regimes emerge, while the analysis also suggests the possibility of building a new typology of democratic regimes. Alongside the process of democratic consolidation in Southern Europe, there has also been an accompanying trend towards convergence: in the direction of majoritarianism, confirmed by the most recent national elections.     

Review article: Realising realism's role in us policy towards Europe

Adam Bronstone, European Union ‐ United States Security Relations. Transatlantic Tensions and the Theory of International Relations. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1997. Pp.viii + 282, biblio., index. £45. ISBN 0–333–69136–9.

Robert L. Hutchings, American Diplomacy and the End of the Cold War. An Insider's Account of US Policy in Europe, 1989–1992. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997. Pp.xx + 456, illus., biblio., index. £33. ISBN 0–8018–5620–5.

Thomas Risse‐Kappen, Cooperation Among Democracies. The European Influence on US Foreign Policy. Princeton: Princeton University Press 1995. Pp.x + 250, biblio., index. £30.50. ISBN 0–6910–3644–6.     

Iran's perception of Western Europe: A study in national and foreign policy articulation

Acts of public communication cannot be isolated from other features of a political process. In fact, a study of public policy articulation can provide a valuable framework of national perceptions, demands and expectations through which a nation's evolving position in the international system may be analyzed. Iran offers a valuable opportunity in this regard because its policy articulation occurs through a limited number of communication channels‐one of which is the newspaper Kayhan. Kayhan has been chosen because of its clear capacity to reflect accurately the perceptions of Iran's political elite in regard to general national development and foreign policy objectives. This paper will concentrate on two reference periods‐one pre‐1973 and one post‐to analyze in terms of selected variables, Iran's evolving elite perceptions of its traditional relationship to Western Europe. Editorials and policy statements have been keyed to selected variables representing various channels of Iran's perceptions and then analyzed to chart shifting policy priorities among Iranian elites. The results indicate a radically altered self‐perception of both national development objectives and Iran's self‐perceived role in global power relationships.     

Asserting EU cohesion: Common foreign and security policy and the relaunch of Europe

The end of the Cold War and its fall‐out throughout the 1990s have created an atmosphere of pessimism about the prospects for the continued development of the integrative structures and processes of the European Union. Exclusionary criteria for monetary union and insufficient democratic institutional structures coupled with a neo‐realist critique of the integrationist project seem to have taken their toll. However, in the historical context of European integration, trade‐offs between the imperatives of deepening cooperation among the member‐states, and widening the community by including new members is, in fact, the norm. Thus, the problems inherent in the drive towards monetary union contain the seeds of cooperation in other areas. Specifically, the European Union will come to emphasize second‐pillar issues of foreign and defense policy both as a method to extend the integrative process in a functional manner, but also to attend to the vital supernational interests of community members.     

RMB Internationalization in Europe

The RMB's current international status is not fitting for the currency of the world's second largest economy,hence China has made RMB internationalization a key objective to support economic growth and a clear foreign strategic goal.Europe is home to many developed economies and is the cradle of modem finance.It uses a number of currencies including the euro,the pound sterling and others,but it has also strongly supported China's RMB.Indeed,Europe has acted a breakthrough2 for the currency's internationalization.The factors behind this merit further analysis.This article summarizes the main progress achieved by RMB internationalization,delves into why Europe has supported this and also elaborates on the future direction of RMB internationalization in a post-Brexit Europe.     

浅析欧洲的"伊斯兰挑战"

欧洲的"伊斯兰挑战"集中反映了欧洲人面对大量外来族群和异质文化出现时的焦虑与困惑.这一问题的形成是多种因素长期作用的结果,如何使日渐庞大的穆斯林族群融入欧洲社会,是当前和今后较长一段时期内欧洲各国面临的一个重要问题.     

欧洲的穆斯林问题

欧洲是一个基督教占主导地位的大陆,其他宗教的影响力甚为有限.但从二战结束以来,由于外来人口的大量涌入,尤其是与欧洲比邻的西亚北非移民的到来,使欧洲族群的构成发生了重大变化,穆斯林已经成为欧盟内部最大的少数族群."9·11"事件以来,出于对内部反恐安全的需要,欧洲舆论和各国政府提高了对欧洲穆斯林的关注程度,穆斯林问题开始逐步成为整个欧洲大陆关注的一大热点.     

Radical Islam in Europe

Europe now faces three related but different challenges: how to respond, in a time when “native” European populations are shrinking, to the growing presence of Muslim minorities; how to avoid having its relationships with its Muslim communities controlled by Islamists who seek to replace Western civilization with Islamic government based on sharia law; and what to do generally about this Islamist threat. Thus far, the European responses to these challenges have been shaped by four factors: accumulated civilizational exhaustion; the inability to grasp the challenge posed to European national identities by the allure of the global Caliphate; weakness arising from degraded security capabilities, including the impact of the continued drive to “build Europe” by adopting the Treaty of Lisbon; and the preference for appeasement of Islamist demands.     

Old Europe,New Europe and Transatlantic Relations

This article establishes the broader framework for the rest of the volume by addressing the contemporary context of transatlantic relations and secondly by establishing strategic culture as the conceptual tool for the collection. The article takes issue with realist/material explanations of recent transatlantic disputes, as posited, for example, by Rober Kagan, which tend to portray the transatlantic divide as the US on one side and Europe on the other. In fact Europe itself was very much divided over Iraq and the conduct of US foreign policy. Moreover, the sources of this division, manifest vividly in the notion of Old and New Europe, were based on cultural, historical as well as material factors and as such are best understood by invoking the concept of strategic culture.

Thoughtful Europeans know that Europe must unite in some form if it is to play a major role in the long run. They are aware, too, that Europe does not make even approximately the defense effort of which it is capable. But European unity is stymied and domestic politics has almost everywhere dominated security policy. The result is a massive frustration which expresses itself in special testiness toward the United States. (Henry Kissinger, 1969) ¹ 1 Henry A. Kissinger, American Foreign Policy: Three Essays, New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 1969, p. 69. ¹The author is grateful to several anonymous reviewers for valuable comments on a previous draft.