The American University in Bulgaria and U.S. Agency for International Development Relationship

Abstract

Upon recognizing a need for a center of western oriented university education, an initiative committee including representatives from the Republic of Bulgaria, the city of Blagoevgrad, and the University of Maine obtained support from philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to start a university in Bulgaria in 1991. The hallmark of its existence was that its programs would be oriented toward teaching democratic values through the American liberal arts tradition. Instruction would be in English so it could draw on students throughout the region if they were proficient in English. The university has grown from a small enrollment of 208 students to over 700 students in several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. As the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) has become a regional institution, the AUBG–USAID relationship has been crucial. Now it is beginning to offer an EMBA program and has developed an excellent reputation through its graduated students.     

An Empirical Typology of Local Government Systems in Eastern Europe

The most widely used typologies of European local government systems are based on research conducted in the 1980s. The most popular are those of Page and Goldsmith (1987), distinguishing between Northern and Southern European systems, and Hesse and Sharpe (1991), distinguishing between Southern, Northern and Anglo-Saxon models. The rare attempts to include the Eastern part of the continent are far from comprehensive or satisfactory. They usually view the whole region as a distinct group, referring to its specific historical background and recent radical decentralisation (Bennett 1993, Heinelt and Hlepas 2006). Disappointingly, the same approach is presented in the most recent comprehensive analysis of European local government systems (Loughlin et al. 2010). This article tries to fill the gap produced by this simplification, by offering a comprehensive picture of the variation within the Eastern European region and suggesting a first attempt at a typology of around 20 countries of the region. The criteria for this typology refers to those used in earlier classifications of the Western European systems and include: (i) territorial organisation and tiers of elected local governments, (ii) scope of functions provided by local governments (functional decentralisation), (iii) financial autonomy, (iv) horizontal power relations within local government institutions (election systems and relationships between mayors and councils).     

Continuity and change in Russia's policy toward Central and Eastern Europe

The accession of the CEE states to NATO and the European Union has put an end to the geopolitical ambiguity and implicit insecurity in the region between Russia and the so-called ‘Old Europe’. Instead of being an area of great powers' rivalry, elements of ‘buffer belts’ lacking meaningful strategic options, objects of raw Nazi-Soviet deals, or zones under Russian occupation and domination, the three Baltic States and the Visegrad group countries became full-fledged members of the European Union and were given NATO's security guarantees. By the middle of the 2000s, one would conclude that traditional geopolitics had ended in this region.However, the changes in the strategic situation in CEE have not changed the deep rooted moving forces and long-term strategic goals of the Russian policy toward the region. Moscow seeks to have the position, as its official rhetoric says, of an ‘influential centre of a multipolar world’ that would be nearly equal to the USA, China, or the EU. With this in view Moscow seeks for the establishment of its domination over the new independent states of the former USSR and for the formation of a sphere of influence for itself in Central Eastern Europe. If it achieves these goals, then Europe may return once again to traditional geopolitics fraught with great power rivalries and permanent instabilities radiating far beyond CEE borders.Yet a few questions remain. Has Russia come to the conclusion that attempting to restore its privileged position of influence in Central-Eastern Europe is wrong? Has Russia enough power to threaten the CEE countries? How credible are NATO's security guarantees? How may Russian behavior in CEE affect a wider European geopolitical context? These questions are appropriate in the light of Russia's ‘resurgence’ as a revanchist power and because Russia is, and most probably will remain in the next five to ten years, a weighty economic and strategic factor in areas along the Western borders of the former USSR.     

Defining Religious Terrorism: A Causal and Anthological Profile

This research is geared toward theory building by alleviating some of the lacunae in three areas of study. First, it redefines what terrorism is by refocusing the definition away from politics and the mens rea of terror to its criminal actus reus. In this endeavor, it proposes a unifying definition that is viable for global assessment and under standing, while being conducive to international military and law enforcement cooperation. The definition is proposed to accommodate the international laws of reciprocity, community, and political framework, without compromising terrorism's criminal liabilities. Second, it defines what a religious terrorist is by using a convergence of psychometric measures from 356 suicide-bombers, taped self-immolations of 15 terrorists and 918 zealots, and triangulated anthologies. Among the outcomes of this mixed-method design is an empowering 32-trait profile of a religious terrorist that is ethno-religious specific and user friendly. Third, it introduces the concept of International Islamization Terrorism (IIT) and calls on future research to assess the propensity of IIT to global calamity, and the viability of a universal religious terrorist profile.     

The Black European Women's Council: ‘thinking oneself into the New Europe’

With the continuous political shift to the right in many European countries, exclusivist constructions of the nation and concepts related to national identity – issues which are immersed in and often conflated with biology and culture – the necessity for mobilization and political activism among women, migrants, and minorities in Europe has become all the more acute and timely. Organized within the framework of the ‘European Year for Equal Opportunities 2007’ and initiated by Béatrice Achaleke, AFRA (International Centre for Black Women's Perspectives in Vienna, Austria, and co-organized by Helen Felter, Director of Tiye International (The Netherlands); the Black European Women's Congress (26–29 September 2007) culminated in the formation of the Black European Woman's Council (hereafter BEWC). Employing a mix of discourse analysis, social movement and intersectional theory, I address the issues of Black female subjectivity, political agency, and strategies in relation to the socio-political empowerment of Black women across Europe. Based on qualitative data, I argue that the cross-border network of the BEWC exhibits the potential to serve as a structured political force not only on local and national levels, but also within the sphere of the European Union; and to possibly assist Black European women activists with the task of ‘thinking themselves into the New Europe’.     

Enforcing consensus? The hidden bias in EU democracy promotion in Central and Eastern Europe

Democracy is a primary export norm of the European Union (EU). It has also played a key role in the conditionalities that have governed the accession processes of new member states in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The EU has often been accused of offering little guidance regarding the specifics of desirable democracy models and the means of their consolidation. But are these accusations justified? In the first part of this article a detailed examination of European Commission opinions and reports reveals that it has consistently promoted a specific model of democracy in future member states. It shows a strong bias in favour of Lijphart's model of consensus democracy, which is indiscriminately advocated for prospective member states. The second part of the article draws attention to the serious obstacles which exist in the region to the realization of this model. We question the wisdom of the Commission's one-size-fits-all democratic model given these obstacles and the real-life diversity of political contexts in the region.     

When government fails us: trust in post-socialist civil organizations

The research for this article was motivated by a noticeable discrepancy between levels of participation and trust in post-socialist civil organizations. While civic participation in Central and Eastern Europe is almost nonexistent, levels of trust in post-socialist civil organizations compare favourably to those in Western Europe. The first aim of this article is to understand why citizens place relatively high trust in post-socialist civil organizations. The political context, within which civil organizations operate, reveals one explanation for the high levels of trust in civil organizations: government corruption dissuades citizens from relying on state institutions and creates a void that is filled by informal networks of association and civil organizations. Empirical evidence demonstrates that trust in civil organizations focused on socioeconomic and political development is higher among citizens who express concern about corruption in their country. The second aim of this article is to understand the discrepancy between levels of trust and civic participation. A novel interpretation of past findings suggests that civil organizations' effectiveness, professionalization, transactional capacity and orientation toward service provision may garner citizens' trust while parallel neglect of grassroots mobilization leaves civil organizations short of capitalizing on that trust. Civil organizations' limited focus on interest aggregation, mobilization and representation raises doubts as to whether observers of civil society in the region should look to these organizations as its core component.     

Shifting borders: Islamophobia as common ground for building pan-European right-wing unity

ABSTRACT

In recent years, Islamophobia has become a useful tool for right-wing parties to mobilize electors in many European nation-states. The general xenophobic campaigns of the 1980s have given way to Islamophobia as a specific expression of racism. It is not only the new incarnations of right-wing populist parties that are making use of Islamophobic populism, but also right-wing extremist parties, whose traditions hark back to fascist or Nazi parties. This development appears unsurprising, as Islamophobia has somehow become a kind of ‘accepted racism’, found not only on the margins of European societies but also at the centre. Another interesting concomitant shift is the attempt by such parties to gain wider acceptance in mainstream societies by distancing themselves from a former antisemitic profile. While the main focus on an exclusive identity politics in the frame of nation-states previously divided the far right and complicated transnational cooperation, a shared Islamophobia has the potential to be a common ground for strengthening the transnational links of right-wing parties. This shift from antisemitism to Islamophobia goes beyond European borders and enables Europe's far right to connect to Israeli parties and the far right in the United States. Hafez's article explores this thesis by analysing the European Alliance for Freedom, a pan-European alliance of far-right members of the European parliament that has brought various formerly antagonistic parties together through a common anti-Muslim programme, and is trying to become a formal European parliamentary fraction in the wake of its victory in the European elections in May 2014.     

Economic strain and perceptions of social cohesion in Europe: Does institutional trust matter?

The degree to which different social groups get along is a key indicator of the cohesiveness of a society. This study examines perceptions of social cohesion among Europeans and explains variations in those perceptions by considering the separate and combined effects of economic strain and institutional trust. Analyses were conducted with the 27 member countries of the EU based on the Eurobarometer 74.1 on poverty and social exclusion conducted in 2010. Results show that individuals living in households experiencing economic strain perceive social cohesion to be weaker than their less economically hard‐pressed counterparts. By contrast, individuals trusting their political institutions perceived there to be higher levels of cohesion. Furthermore, institutional trust substantially moderates the negative relationship between economic strain and perceptions of cohesion. These results are robust to various model specifications. Moreover, extending the analysis revealed that this moderating effect held when considering social relations between the poor and rich and between different racial and ethnic groups. Theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed.     

Civil society

The idea of civil society has proved very elusive, escaping conceptual grasps and evading sure-footed negotiation of the concept itself. Resurrected in a very definite historical setting, that of authoritarian states, the concept of civil society came to signify a set of social and political practices that sought to engage with state power. The close connection with the re-emergence of the concept and the collapse of dictatorial states made civil society attractive to a variety of political agents pursuing different agendas: expanding the market at the expense of the state, transiting from mass politics to single-issue and localised campaigns, undermining confidence in accepted modes of representation such as political parties, and in general shrinking the domain of the state and that of accepted modes of politics. That the concept of civil society could suit such a variety of different political projects is cause for some alarm, for it might well mean that civil society has come to mean everything to everyone remotely interested in it.