Orthodoxy and the Cold War:religion and political power in Romania, 1947-65

This book examines the unique dynamics between Orthodoxy and politics in Romania. It provides an accessible narrative on church-state relations in the early Cold War period within a wider timeframe, from the establishment of the state in 1859 to the rise of Nicolae Ceausescu in 1965. In the 1950s Romania began to distance itself from Moscow's influence, developing its own form of communism. Based on new archival resources, the book argues that Romanian national communism, outside Moscow's influence, had an ally in a strong Church. It addresses the following questions: How did the Church, which openly opposed communism in the interwar period, survive the atheist regime? How did the regime use religion to its political advantage? What was the Church's influence on Romanian politics? The book analyses the political interests of the Romanian Orthodox Church and its religious diplomacy with actors in the West, in particular with the Church of England.

Eastern Christianity and the Cold War, 1945-91

Despite widespread persecution, Orthodox churches not only survived the Cold War period but levels of religiosity in Orthodox countries remained significant. This book examines the often surprising relations between Orthodox churches and political regimes. It provides a comprehensive overview of the dynamics between Eastern Christianity and politics from the end of the Second World War to the fall of communism, covering 40 Orthodox churches including diasporic churches in Africa, Asia, America and Australia. Based on research from recently-opened archives and publications in a wide range of European languages, it analyses church-state relations on both sides of the Iron Curtain. It discusses the following key themes: the relationship between Orthodox churches and political power; religious resistance to communism; the political control of churches; religion and propaganda; monasticism and theological publications; religious diplomacy within the Orthodox commonwealth; and religious contacts between East and West.

EU-ASEAN relations in the post-Cold War era:an analysis of the impact of normative factors on interregionalism

This thesis examines the relationship between the European Union (EU) and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with a focus on why their normative elements, e.g. values and norms, affect their ties in the post-Cold War era. Since the end of the Cold War, policy-makers and academics have become interested in region-to-region interaction, termed interregionalism. Though interregionalism is considered to have become an indelible feature of post-Cold War international politics, there are question marks over its importance. It is often argued that interregionalism reinforces the collective identity of the regional organisations involved. It is also maintained that its overall relevance to the international system depends on the level of actorness, which is primarily measured in institutional and material terms, of the participant regional organisations. This thesis contends that the normative components of the EU and ASEAN are also fundamental constituents of their actorness and, consequently, define significantly their interregionalism. This is based on a crucial observation that normative factors are of importance to the regional and international relations of the EU and ASEAN. Yet, while they strongly espouse norms and values to guide their internal and external activities, their normative premises radically differ from each other. Furthermore, these normative differences jeopardise their cooperation. Building on this observation the inquiry takes the normative components of the EU and ASEAN as the criterion as well as the focus for investigating their interregionalism. In doing so, it hypothesises that the EU and ASEAN are two different regional actors that adopt two dissimilar sets of norms to conduct their regional and international affairs and that such normative differences hinder their relations. Within this hypothesis, it seeks to address three central questions. First, what are the normative features that constitute the EU and ASEAN as actors in world politics and that make them different from each other? Second, what are the main sources of their normative differences? Finally, why do their normative differences become an obstructive factor in their relationship? To address these issues, the inquiry adopts a constructivist interpretation (of International Relations) and opts for a narrative and empirical inquiry, which is based on information and data acquired from official documents, scholarly works and interviews and questionnaires. In doing so, it finds that as they were born and evolved in two dissimilar temporal and spatial settings, the EU and ASEAN are two different norm entrepreneurs and normative powers. The former advocates a set of liberal cosmopolitan norms whereas the latter champions a set of traditional communitarian principles. Their normative differences become a major obstacle to their cooperation, especially when one regional organisation’s norms are refused or violated by the other. Thus, a key lesson drawn from these findings is that in order to explain more fully EU-ASEAN interregionalism, it is essential to consider their norms, the reasons behind their normative differences and the implication of those differences to their relations

Regionalism, globalisation and international order:Europe and Southeast Asia

New regionalism and globalization have been prominent themes in academic and political debates since the beginning of the 1990s. Despite the considerable amount of scholarly attention that the new regionalism has received in recent years, its full empirical and theoretical potential has yet to be fully investigated. This illuminating study provides an overview of new avenues in theorizing regionalism and proposes a consolidated framework for analysis and comparison. Offering a comparative historical perspective of European and Southeast Asian regionalism, it presents new and imaginative insights into the theory and practice of regionalism and the links between regional developments, globalization and international order. Contents: Introduction; Regionalism and integration theory the first wave: traditional approaches; New regionalism the second wave: towards a framework for comparative regionalism; Regionalism in the EU and ASEAN during the Cold War: the first wave; Second-wave regionalism: the post-Cold War period; Identifying regions: emerging regional identities in Europe and East Asia; Conclusion; Appendix; Bibliography; Index.

Beyond securitisation : Western Mediterranean international relations from a security perspective 1989-2002

Following the end of the Cold War and the ensuing changes to the international landscape, thinking about security has tended to become more discursive and interpretative in nature. What counts as security has increasingly derived from security discourses (that is, 'securitisation') and uncertainty about the multi-faceted future facing various countries and regions. Within this post-Cold War discourse, the Western Mediterranean has emerged as a region fraught with latent and manifest threats in the economic, political, societal and military sectors. Improved access to EU markets for Maghrebi exports; the security of energy supplies to the EU from Algeria and Libya; lack of democracy and the advance of political Islam; the flow of northward migration and worries about law and order in France, Italy and Spain; the growth in military expenditure and weapons proliferation in the Maghreb; all have been central to the securitisation agenda. However, this agenda has often lacked credibility especially when inter-linkages have purportedly been established between economic underdevelopment and political instability, between the advance of political Islam and the threat to energy supplies, or between immigration and the threat to national identity. Such inter-sectoral linkages distract from the credibility of those 'securitisation instances' which correspond to reality; the former linkages have often been exploited by extremist politicians in south-west European countries as well as by regimes in the Maghreb to advance their respective interests. Thus, securitisation may defeat its main purpose; it may generate responses out of keeping with the aims proclaimed at the outset, aims centred on the countering of real threats and the ensuring of greater stability.

Scientists, trade unions and labour movement policies for science and technology, 1947-1964

This thesis describes the history of the scientific Left beginning with the period of its most extensive influence in the mid-1940s as a movement for the planning of science and ending with the Labour Party's programme of 1964 claiming to harness science and socialism. Its central theme is the external and internal pressures involved in the project to align left-wing politics, trade unions and social responsibility in science. The problematic aspects of this project are examined in the evolution of the Association of Scientific Workers and the World Federation of Scientific Workers as organisations committed to trade union and science policy objectives. This is presented also in the broader context of the Association's attempts to influence the Trade Union Congress's policies for science and technology in a more radical direction. The thesis argues that the shift in the balance of political forces in the labour movement, in the scientific community and in the state brought about by the Cold War was crucial in frustrating these endeavours. This led to alternative, but largely unsuccessful attempts, in the form of the Engels Society and subsequently Science for Peace to create the new expressions of the left-wing politics of science. However, the period 1956-1964 was characterised by intensive interest within the Labour Party in science and technology which reopened informal channels of political influence for the scientific Left. This was not matched by any radical renewal within the Association or the Trade Union Congress and thus took place on a narrower basis and lacked the democratic aspects of the earlier generation of socialist science policy.

Comparing regional organizations in global multilateral institutions:ASEAN, the EU and the UN

Structural change brought about by the end of the Cold War and accelerated globalisation have transformed the global environment. A global governance complex is emerging, characterised by an ever-greater functional and regulatory role for multilateral organisations such as the United Nations (UN) and its associated agencies. The evolving global governance framework has created opportunities for regional organisations to participate as actors within the UN (and other multilateral institutions). This article compares the European Union (EU) and Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as actors within the UN network. It begins by extrapolating framework conditions for the emergence of EU and ASEAN actorness from the literature. The core argument of this article is that EU and ASEAN actorness is evolving in two succinct stages: Changes in the global environment create opportunities for the participation of regional organisations in global governance institutions, exposing representation and cohesion problems at the regional level. In response, ASEAN and the EU have initiated processes of institutional adaptation.

Roman Catholicism, diplomacy, and the European communities, 1958-1964

This article investigates the Roman Catholic Church's role in the process of European integration from the first Hallstein Commission in 1958 to the failure of the Holy See's application to establish a diplomatic representation at the European Economic Community in 1964. The article focuses on the Church's response toward emerging European institutions and shows that local mobilization in Luxembourg, Strasbourg, and Brussels was instrumental in shaping relations between the Catholic Church and the European Communities (EC). The Church's position toward the EC, placing local communities as prime actors in dialogue with European institutions, reflected the sensitive nature of religion during the Cold War.

The Ecumenical movement and the making of the European Community

The European Community has largely been considered a predominantly secular project, bringing together the economic and political realms, while failing to mobilise the public voice and imagination of churchmen and the faithful. Drawing on a wide range of archival sources, this is the first study to assess the political history of religious dialogue in the European Community. It challenges the widespread perception that churches started to engage with European institutions only after the 1979 elections to the European Parliament, by detailing close relations between churchmen and high-ranking officials in European institutions, immediately after the 1950 Schuman Declaration. Lucian N. Leustean demonstrates that Cold War divisions between East and West, and the very nature of the ecumenical movement, had a direct impact on the ways in which churches approached the European Community. He brings to light events and issues which have not previously been examined, such as the response of churches to the Schuman Plan, and the political mobilisation of church representations in Brussels, Strasbourg and Luxembourg. Leustean argues that the concept of a 'united Europe' has been impeded by competing national differences between religious and political institutions, having a long-standing legacy on the making of a fragmented European Community.

Eastern Christianity and politics in the Twenty-First Century

This book provides an up-to-date, comprehensive overview of Eastern Christian churches in Europe, the Middle East, America, Africa, Asia and Australia. Written by leading international scholars in the field, it examines both Orthodox and Oriental churches from the end of the Cold War up to the present day. The book offers a unique insight into the myriad church-state relations in Eastern Christianity and tackles contemporary concerns, opportunities and challenges, such as religious revival after the fall of communism; churches and democracy; relations between Orthodox, Catholic and Greek Catholic churches; religious education and monastic life; the size and structure of congregations; and the impact of migration, secularisation and globalisation on Eastern Christianity in the twenty-first century.

Still entrenched in the conflict/cooperation dichotomy? EU–Russia relations and the Ukraine crisis

The article highlights that the traditional conflict/cooperation dichotomy which characterised the dynamic of European Union (EU)–Russia relation during the post-Cold War period has remained stable throughout the Ukraine crisis. It identifies a pattern of continuity rather than change in the main characteristics of the traditional conflict/cooperation dichotomy: the post-Cold War order on the European continent, values and worldviews, perceptions of self and other, and policies towards each other and post-Soviet space. Secondly, in tune with neoclassical realism the article aims to account for the relative persistence of the conflict/cooperation dichotomy. It argues that the dynamic of EU–Russia relations remained rather stable due to the fact that neither the EU nor Russian foreign policy has undergone major transformations (of both power, scope and organisation) that would provide incentive or constrains for a complete overhaul of the conflict/cooperation dichotomy. Moreover, the article claims that the relative stability of world politics since the start of the Ukraine crisis has not given any the EU and Russia incentives – or constrained them – to seek to change the overall dynamic of their relationship.