The Politics of Fear

The future of the European Union has never been more in doubt than at the very moment it has been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize for its historical accomplishments. When the heads of Europe's weakest institutions—the Commission, the Council and the Parliament—collected the prize in Oslo on December 10, 2012 they spotlighted the nub of the problem. Unless these institutions can garner the legitimacy of European citizens and transform into a real federal union with common fiscal and economic policies to complement the single currency, Europe will remain at the mercy of global financial markets and the fiscally authoritarian dictates of its strongest state, Germany. Moving beyond this state of affairs was the focus of a recent “town hall” gathering in Berlin sponsored by the Berggruen Institute on Governance. The meeting brought together current power brokers—such as the contending voices of German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schäuble and French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici, who rarely appear in public together—as well as Europe's top former leaders, key thinkers and young people who will govern in the future. The peace‐building project of the European Union was born out of the ashes of World War II and the anguish of the Cold War. Yet, as George Soros points out, its current inability to resolve the eurocrisis by forging greater union is dividing Europe once again, this time between creditors and debtors. Former Greek premier George Papandreou has warned that this division is fomenting a new politics of fear that is giving rise to the same kind of xenophobic movements that fueled the extreme politics of the Nazi era. To avoid a repeat of the last calamitous century, Europe first of all needs a growth strategy both to escape the “debt trap” it is in—and which austerity alone will only deepen—and to create breathing space for the tough structural reforms that can make Europe as a whole competitive again in a globalized world. To sustain reform, it needs a clear path to legitimacy for the institutions that must govern a federal Europe. The proof that Europe can escape its crisis through a combination of growth, fiscal discipline and structural reform comes from the one country so many want to keep out of the union: Turkey. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan rightfully boasts of Turkey's accomplishments that resulted from the difficult changes carried out after its crisis in 2001—ranging from quickly cleaning up the banks to liberalizing markets to trimming social benefits to make them more affordable in the long run. As a result, Turkey today is the fastest growing economy in the world alongside China with diminished deficit and debt levels that meet the eurozone criteria that many members states themselves cannot today meet. Turkey has even offered a 5 billion euro credit through the IMF for financial aid to Europe. Germany itself also provides some lessons for the rest of Europe. The obvious reason Germany rules today is because it is the most globally competitive country in the European Union. That is the result of a series of reforms that were implemented starting in 2003 under the leadership of then‐chancellor Gerhard Schröder. Aimed a bolstering Germany's industrial base and its collateral small and medium enterprises which are the foundation of its middle class society, those reforms introduced more labor flexibility and trimmed benefits to make them sustainably affordable while investing in training, maintaining skills and research and development. Even if Europe's individual nation states can shrink imbalances by following Turkey and Germany in getting their act together, the only ultimate way to save the euro, and thus Europe itself, is to build the complementary governing institutions at the European level. For those institutions to become effective, they must be empowered and legitimated by European citizens themselves. To this end, Tony Blair has suggested a bold move: the direct election of a European president. Symbolically, the Oslo ceremonies were a historical turning point for Europe. By recognizing the European Union's peace‐making past, the Nobel Prize challenged Europe to escape once and for all the destructive pull of narrow national interests and passions.     

The Piper Played to Us All: Orchestrating the Cultural Cold War in the USA, Europe, and Latin America

Review of a recent book on the Congress for Cultural Freedom by British author and documentary filmmaker Frances Stono Saunders, Who Paid the Piper? The CIA and the Cultural Cold War (London: Granta, 1999), leads into an examination of the cold war ideological contest in the United States, Europe, and Latin America. Particular attention is given to the Americas and U.S. efforts to manipulate the social sciences as instruments of hemispheric control. Saunder's book is compared and contrasted to other works on the cultural cold war, while extensive references are provided for further reading and research.     

Gender Identification and the Fear of Crime: Do Masculinity and Femininity Matter in Reporting Fear of Crime?

ABSTRACT

Criminologists have been interested in the gap in reported levels of fear of crime between men and women for decades. Our study advances and empirically tests the hypothesis that gender identity is an important mechanism that accounts for the gap in fear of crime between men and women. Specifically, the current study incorporates Magliozzi, Saperstein, and Westbrook’s gradational measures of masculinity and femininity to test if these variables are related to fear of crime. Statistical analyses reveal that masculinity is negatively and significantly associated with fear of crime, suggesting that men may be doing gender in reporting fear of crime by suppressing their expression of fear when responding to survey items related to fear of crime. Additionally, the inclusion of the measures of masculinity and femininity in our statistical model reduces the effect of sex to non-significance.     

Fear,Anxiety and the State of Terror

The 11 September 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon marked the advent of an unprecedented preoccupation with terrorism. Although Australia's actual terrorist risk profile remains marginal in comparison with other mortality risks, in times of crisis, the reasoned negotiation of risk is marginalised. Drawing on the findings of qualitative research, this article offers an analysis of how Australians are responding to the threat of terrorism embodied in a developing discourse of the war on terror and how they construct their perceptions of terrorist risk. The findings implicate community fear as a factor that should be considered in the development of counter terrorism strategies that emphasize community engagement as a mechanism for challenging radicalisation in democratic states.     

见义勇为中的未成年人权益保护研究

见义勇为是中华民族的宝贵精神财富,对于维护社会稳定、弘扬社会正气、遏制违法犯罪、提升全社会的道德水平具有巨大的积极意义。未成年人正处在成长时期,个人力量和生活经验、判断能力都十分有限,并不具备助人脱险或与犯罪作正面斗争的能力。法律规范应注重保护未成年人的生命健康权,把实现未成年人最大利益放在首位。道德教育应注重以人为本、尊重生命,弘扬见义勇为精神实质。全社会更应坚持科学、理性的态度,不过度提倡未成年人见义勇为,引导未成年人合理地“见义而为”,在法律与制度中体现未成年人的最大利益。     

Fear of a black planet: anarchy anxieties and postcolonial travel to Africa

Western travel to Africa has historically involved the construction and consumption of African otherness. In the postcolonial era this is most clearly evident in Western tourism to the continent, where Africa is frequently marketed as an exoticised destination to see and consume both ‘nature’ and ‘native’. The Western tourist gaze often requires fixing Africans, both in a spatial site (‘village’) and a temporal site (‘tradition’). Africans on the move (both spatially and temporally) are often seen as threatening to the Western‐established images of Africa, which are grounded in a long‐standing fear of ‘unorded’ and ‘chaotic’ African space. After 11 September and the USA's ‘war on terror’ retributive response, the political implications of these fears are evinced in the writings of Robert Kaplan and his popular ‘coming anarchy’ thesis. The article concludes with a critique of Kaplan's work and a discussion of its implications for Africa and African international relations.     

The Mother of All Solutions for the Global Crisis

The solidarity of the G‐20 nations in staving off global financial crisis two years ago has deteriorated into a brawl over currency valuations, trade imbalances and sovereign debt, reflecting the great powershift from the West to the East and the emerging economies. In this section, we invited comments from historians, a former head of state who successfully navigated the Asian financial crisis and a prominent Chinese dissident.     

以友城为纽带开展多领域的交流与合作

国际友好城市工作是国家总体外交在地方的延伸,是民间外交的重要形式,是地方政府开展国际交流与合作的重要渠道.自1980年福州市与日本长崎市缔结为我省第一对国际友好城市以来,我省的国际友好城市工作已走过了24年历程.目前,全省已与19个国家的41个省(州、县、大区)、市建立了友好城市关系,初步形成了覆盖亚洲、欧洲、美洲和大洋洲的友好城市交往格局,在经贸、农林、水产、科技、文化、教育、体育、卫生、环保、旅游和人才培养等领域开展了富有成效的交流与合作,取得了可喜成果.