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.     

Democratization without enlargement? The European Neighbourhood Policy on post-communist transitions

This article explores the concept of normative power in Europe by assessing the democratic impact of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) in Eastern Europe. By focusing on democratization as a normative objective of the ENP, the authors argued that the European Union (EU) should not be assumed to be a normative power in international politics. It is argued that the EU vision of creating a ring of friends through the ENP has failed. Although the number of EU member states has significantly increased, and the Western European norms and values have become consolidated in most of Europe, Europe remains divided between EU member states and the others. The democratic decline in Russia, the conflict in Georgia in 2008, and the growing authoritarianism in Belarus and Ukraine have had negative effects on the notion of a whole, free, and democratized Europe.     

Regional Modernization in China: Project Concept and Organization

Abstract

During the May Fourth Culture Movement, Chen Duxiu from New Youth and Du Yaquan of Eastern Miscellany engaged in a series of heated exchanges in their common search for a solution to the Republican crisis and an understanding of World War I. Du argued that nation-states are founded on the cultural and civilizational orientation of its people, therefore the essence of war and the source of political conflict are functions of the thoughts of the people. This insight shifted the debate from the political to the cultural arena, and allowed the May Fourth intellectuals to examine the attributes of Eastern and Western civilizations as a way to counter the threats of Hongxian monarchism, China’s political and social fragmentation, as well as the inadequacies of Western nation-statehood. Du predicted that the future master of the twentieth century would be a scientific laborer with a cultural outlook derived from the mediation of the traditional Chinese and twentieth-century European civilizations.¹     

Intentional disruptions and violence in Ukraine's Supreme Rada: political competition,order, and disorder in a post-Soviet chamber, 2006–2012

This paper focuses on diverse forms of parliamentary violence (blocking the orators' platform and the chairman's podium, destruction of equipment, and violent brawls) during 2006–2012 in the Ukrainian parliament, and analyzes them as a repertoire of habitual parliamentary actions. The paper attributes these violent incidents to two external factors. First, they must be understood in the context of the general de-pacification of relations among principal political actors in Ukraine as well as exacerbation of political and ideological tensions among those actors. Second, the emergence of more violent episodes in the Rada, breaking with a more routine modus operandi of disruptions, has its origin in the earlier, prepolitical careers of certain members of parliament and their propensity to bring into politics particular dispositions (i.e., propensity to use violence) acquired in those previous professional experiences.     

Coalitional presidentialism and legislative control in post-Soviet Ukraine

Two political scientists explore the significance of pro-presidential legislative coalitions in Ukrainian politics since 2000. They draw on an original survey of MPs and cabinet data to engage with the extant analysis of coalitional politics in Ukraine. Using the framework of “coalitional presidentialism,” which was first developed in the study of Latin American presidential systems, they find evidence to suggest that legislative coalitions are a meaningful feature of Ukrainian legislative life, and point to the tools that presidents use to maintain them.     

Planning,Budgeting, and Health Care Performance in Ukraine

Abstract

The Government of Ukraine has not pursued health care reforms now commonplace in the rest of Europe and Central/Eastern Europe that rely less upon centralized, state delivery of services and more on decentralized operational responsibilities and competition for services that increase patient choice. The Ukrainian health sector suffers from personnel overspecialization and facility overcapacity, resulting in high-cost, low productivity services. Budget funds are unavailable for operations and maintenance resulting in poor quality services. The state provides health care as a constitutionally-protected monopoly, relying on the traditional command and control model which ignores cost/quality competition options and responsibilities to patients. Overall, the system which produces these results is over-centralized, requiring achievement of physical service norms without providing sufficient funds. The centralized system does not monitor or evaluate services beyond narrow financial accountability and control requirements. The health care system is paradoxically over-centralized but unable to regulate or control local health care official decisions to ensure compliance with national standards. Needed are reforms in the health care policy and operational areas to produce the supply of services needed for national economic recovery. In the short-term, the budgetary framework can be improved as an operational/management guide through development of comparative information on results. Most of this information can be based on the economic classification consistent with the chart of accounts. Funding stability can be increased to improve expenditure control by implementing a new fiscal transfer formula that provides discretion (i.e., block grants) and performance criteria (i.e., outcome measures). In the medium-term, building on the technical foundation of physical norms and statistical reporting, the health care budgeting and financial management system should shift emphasis to: program planning, policy and management analysis, and public communications. The results of these reforms should lead to decentralized health care operations, service analysis, and delivery responsibilities. At the same time, the reforms should lead to proper centralization of responsibilities for strategic policy decisions, safety regulation, national standards, and program evaluation.     

Ukraine's relations with the West since the Orange Revolution

Abstract

This article argues that many of Ukraine's problems are long-standing and remain unresolved because government policies are virtual (i.e. do not conform to official documents or statements) thereby reducing the effectiveness of the West's (here understood primarily as NATO and the EU) engagement with Ukraine and the ability of Kyiv to pursue its declared foreign policy objectives. The article discusses Ukraine's relations with the West through cycles of Disinterest, Partnership and Disillusionment. Under Presidents Leonid Kravchuk and Leonid Kuchma three cycles equated to Kravchuk's presidency (Disinterest, 1991–94), Kuchma's first term (Partnership, 1994–99) and second term (Disillusionment, 2000–04). Three cycles partially repeated itself during Viktor Yushchenko's presidency with Partnership (2005–06) after the Orange Revolution followed by Disillusionment (2007–09), often described as ‘Ukraine fatigue’. US Disinterest in Ukraine from 2009 is an outgrowth of the Barrack Obama administrations ‘re-set’ policies with Russia resembling the ‘Russia-first’ policies of the early 1990s George W. Bush administration. US Disinterest covers the late Yushchenko era and continued into the Yanukovych presidency. The West held out a hope of Partnership for Viktor Yanukovych following his February 2010 election after taking at face value his claim of becoming a more democratic leader, compared with during the 2004 elections, coupled with an expectation he would bring political stability to Ukraine. Partnership quickly evaporated into Disillusionment the following year.     

From revolution to reform and back: EU-Security sector reform in Ukraine

ABSTRACT

Security Sector Reform (SSR) is an important element of the EU’s external intervention toolkit. In an increasingly uncertain global security environment, the EU has currently stepped up its SSR endeavours. However, success of these efforts largely depends on the EU’s capabilities in navigating complex context-specific challenges. In particular the EU needs to be able to simultaneously address the functional and normative-societal imperatives that underpin SSR. This article considers the case of the EU’s ongoing SSR mission to Ukraine – the European Union Advisory Mission (EUAM). It asks, what are the unique context-specific challenges faced by EUAM in Ukraine? How do these challenges influence the EU’s ability to satisfy both the normative-societal imperative of SSR through the EUAM? This article mainly relies on secondary data, and applies a “Whole of Society” approach to conflict prevention and peacebuilding (WOS). Amidst a situation of ongoing multiple armed conflicts and EU-Russian relations of mutual dependence, a key finding is that the mandate of the mission has become more narrow and exclusive by sacrificing vertical coherence and the normative-societal imperative. We recommend EUAM adopt a more “revolutionary” approach to SSR, by adhering to key SSR normative principles so that the mission can overcome the challenges of the unique reform environment of Ukriane. This will also make it able to contribute more meaningfully to the wider reform process in an effective and sustainable manner.     

Partisan Development in Post-Soviet Ukraine

ABSTRACT

The development of mass partisanship and party identification in post-Soviet societies is a controversial subject of scholarly research. One prevalent view argues that post-Soviet citizens are distrustful of parties and that it will take generations for party identification to appear in these societies. Others argue that partisanship is emerging as a result of citizens perceiving meaningful differences between the parties. If party identification is forming, partisanship should be relatively stable across time at the individual level. This study takes a rare look at 1999 panel data from Ukraine to determine the degree of partisan stability. The findings demonstrate that meaningful party identification appears to be emerging for a significant proportion of the population due to political information and this partisanship is influencing election decision making among Ukrainian voters.     

The practice and implications of legislative proxy voting in Ukraine

Governing parties often face the challenge of coordinating the behavior of legislators to pass bills and achieve their policy goals. Solutions to this collective action problem vary, but generally involve a combination of inducements and punishments to encourage legislators to toe the party line. “Ghost voting,” a form of proxy voting in which legislators record roll-call votes in place of their absent co-partisans has been noted over time in many representative institutions. This article addresses the process of proxy voting in Ukraine’s Verkhovna Rada, empirically demonstrating that proxy voting has been widespread and essential to the success of crucial legislation. At the same time, proxy voting creates impediments to measures of legislative unity and undermines accountability.