Rola Francji i Niemiec w procesie integracji europejskiej w latach 1992-2007

Francja i Niemcy przez stulecia walczyły o zdobycie władzy i przejęcie wpływów na kontynencie europejskim i traktowały siebie nawzajem jako największe zagrożenie. Jednak tragiczna pierwsza połowa XX wieku przyniosła z jednej strony pragnienie zapewnienia, iż okropności wojny już nigdy się nie powtórzą, a z drugiej strony poczucie, że nieodzowna jest zmiana dwustronnych stosunków panujących między Berlinem a Paryżem. Konieczność stworzenia przestrzeni wolności i współpracy doprowadziła niegdysiejszych wrogów do stworzenia idei integracji najważniejszych części gospodarki. Pomysł zjednoczenia krajów Europy Zachodniej przekształcił się w kolejnych latach w symbol zaangażowania francusko-niemieckiego. Dwie republiki stały się rdzeniem europejskiej współpracy i spiritus movens zmian politycznych, ekonomicznych i instytucjonalnych w powojennej Europie. Po upadku komunizmu w 1989 roku ich rola zyskała nowy wymiar w odmiennych warunkach geopolitycznych - od momentu podpisania Traktatu z Maastricht w 1992 roku francusko-niemiecki duet powiększył swe znaczenie i wpływ na politykę nowej Unii Europejskiej. Realizacja zapisów Traktatu z Maastricht i kolejnych dokumentów, w tym Traktatu z Lizbony, koncentracja na kwestiach reform instytucjonalnych, jak również przygotowania do wschodniego rozszerzenia UE mogą być rozpatrywane jedynie w odniesieniu do wspólnych działań prowadzonych przez nadreński tandem. Realizacja trzech filarów integracji: współpracy w wymiarze ekonomicznym i społecznym, wspólnej polityki zagranicznej i bezpieczeństwa, jak również współpracy policyjnej i sądowej w sprawach karnych, podkreślają znaczenie couple franco-allemand i zwracają uwagę na rolę lidera, jaką Paryż i Berlin odgrywają w dziedzinie integracji.

The Iranian Foreign Policy in the Persian Gulf Region under the Rule of President Hassan Rouhani: Continuity of Change

Although Iran borders with many states and has direct access to the Caspian Sea as well as the Indian Ocean, the Persian Gulf region seems to be the most vital area to its security and prosperity. Yet since the 70’s Iran’s relations with the Arab states in the region have been rather strained and complex. The main reason for that had been the success of the Islamic revolution in 1979 which later resulted in a new dimension of Sunni-Shia rivalry. Moreover, post-revolutionary Iranian authorities also intended to maintain the regional hegemony from the Imperial State of Iran period. As a result, successive Iranian governments competed for hegemony in the Persian Gulf with the littoral Arab states which consolidated their regional positions due to close links and intensive cooperation with the West especially with the United States. Despite some political and economic initiatives which were undertaken by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, this rivalry was also evident between 2005–2013. The main aim of this article is to find out whether Iranian foreign policy towards the Arab states in the Persian Gulf region has undergone any significant changes since Hassan Rouhani became the President of the Islamic Republic of Iran in August 2013. According to Mohammad Reza Deshiri, the Iranian foreign policy after 1979 can be divided into so-called waves of idealism and realism. During dominance of idealism values and spirituality are more important than pragmatism while during the realistic waves political as well as economic interests prevail over spirituality. Iranian idealism is connected with export of revolutionary ideas, Shia dominance as well as the restoration of unity among all muslims (ummah). On this basis both presidential terms of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad can be classified as ‘waves of idealism’, albeit some of his ideas were very pragmatic. The question is if Hassan Rouhani’s foreign policy represents a continuity or a change. Is the current Iran’s foreign policy towards the Persian Gulf region idealistic or rather realistic? The main assumption is that there will be no Arab-Iranian rapprochement in the Persian Gulf without a prior normalization of political relations between Iran and the West especially the United States.

Turkey and the Iranian Nuclear Program. Challenges and Opportunities

In the article was analyzed Turkish policy to Iran. In the last decade Turkey established regular relations with increasing trade exchange volume. In 2010 Turkey and Brazil proposed a plan for solution Iran’s nuclear deadlock. Although, a plan was not accepted by the Western powers at present in dealing with Iranian nuclear crisis Turkish role as a reliable mediator should be greater.

Ford, Carter and Cambodia: US foreign policy and the Khmer Rouge

This thesis is an investigation into the US response to the Khmer Rouge regime in Cambodia between 1974 and 1981. It argues that the US experience in the Vietnam War acted as a causal factor in the formulation of its Cambodian policy during the presidencies of Gerald Ford and Jimmy Carter. From taking power in April 1975 to their removal by the Vietnamese in January 1979, the Khmer Rouge initiated a revolution unrivalled in the 20th Century for its brutality and for the total eradication of modern society. This thesis demonstrates that the Ford administration viewed Cambodia only as it pertained to their strategy in Vietnam and, following US disengagement from Indochina all but ignored the atrocities occurring there as they instead pursued informal relations with the Khmer Rouge as a means of punishing the Vietnamese. The Carter administration formulated a foreign policy based on human rights yet failed to adequately address the genocide that occurred in Cambodia due to its temporal and regional proximity to Vietnam. Instead, this collective reluctance to reengage with the region and the resulting anti-Vietnamese attitude reinforced Brzezinski’s broader global strategy that allied the US with China in support of an independent Cambodia to further isolate Hanoi. Thus this thesis argues that the distorting impact of the Vietnam War, as well as global Cold War calculations, undermined any appreciation of the Cambodian conflict and caused both administrations to pursue policies in Cambodia that ultimately supported the Khmer Rouge regime. This project incorporates declassified material from the Ford and Carter Presidential Libraries, supplemented by the material from the National Archives and Library of Congress, and relevant newspapers and periodicals. It demonstrates that the limitations placed upon US foreign policy by their experience in the Vietnam War may be used to reveal unexplored elements in US-Cambodian relations.

Greek-Turkish Dilemmas and the Cyprus-EU Accession Process

This article compares the processes of foreign policymaking in Greece and Turkey in order to examine why the incentives and pressures of the enlargement process have failed until now to initiate a settlement in the Cyprus bicommunal negotiations. While most studies on the Cyprus problem have focused on the two communities of the island, little at-tention has been paid to the policies of the two â??motherlandsâ??, namely Greece and Turkey. Yet their leverage on the two Cypriot communities and their conflicting expectations with regard to an enlarged Europe in the Eastern Mediterranean constitute a complex security puzzle. The Republic of Cyprus stands as a champion candidate member for the next enlargement, amid fears of Turkish reprisals and hopes for a po-litical settlement on the island. With the benefits of settlement overwhelming the benefits of any other alternative, it is paradoxical that the parties seem to be about to fail to reach a last-minute, mutually beneficial compromise. I try to resolve this paradox by supplementing rational choice theory with cognitivist theories of international relations. While rational choice predicts a direct relationship between external environment and foreign policy shifts, the case of Cyprus suggests that this relationship is actually indirect. Without understanding how the external environment is framed in the domestic political discourse of Greece and Turkey, it is impossible to demonstrate how outside pressure and incentives affect foreign policy shifts.

'Foreign' Terror? London Bombings, Resistance and the Failing State

The British government's response to the London bombings sought to make the terror of that day foreign, even though it appeared largely domestic. This helped construct it as unusual, contingent, part of the uncontrollable ‘otherness’ of the ‘foreign’. However, it also drew the response into the arena of British foreign policy, where the ‘failing state’ has been the dominant conceptualisation of insecurity and terrorism, especially since September 11th. When the bombings are examined through the ‘failing state’ disturbing and important problems are uncovered. Primarily, the ‘failing state’ discourse deconstructs under the influence of the terrorism in London, revealing that Britain itself is a ‘failing state’ by its own description and producing a generalisation of state ‘failure’. It thereby reveals several possible sites for responding to and resisting the government's representation.

Textualising British Politics: Deconstructing the subject of British foreign policy

British politics has been described as a sub-discipline crying out for methodological and ideational cross-fertilisation. Where other areas of political science have benefited from new ideas, British politics has remained largely atheoretical and underdeveloped. This has changed recently with the rise of interpretivism but the study of British politics would also benefit from more serious engagement with poststructuralism. With this in mind, I examine how the thought of Jacques Derrida and deconstruction could be useful for thinking through the foundations of British politics, re-examining what appears natural or given and revealing the problematic and contradictory status of these foundations. After suggesting the need to 'textualise' British politics', I illustrate how deconstruction operates in a specific context, that of British foreign policy since 1997. This exploration reveals how certain decisions (such as the invasion of Iraq in 2003) became possible in the first place, and how their basis in an idea of an 'us' and a 'them', a coherent, autonomous subject separate from its object, is deeply problematic. Such a critical reading of British politics is impossible within the dominant interpretivist framework, and opens up new possibilities for thought which form an important supplement to existing ways of studying the field.

Continuity and Change in the European Union’s Approach to Enlargement::Turkey and Central and Eastern Europe compared

Existing studies of European Union (EU) enlargement provide few answers to questions concerning continuity and change in the dynamics of the process. This article identifies a number of conditioning factors that have shaped the EU’s approach to eastern enlargement and traces elements of continuity and change in the EU’s handling of Turkey’s membership aspirations. The article focuses on three established factors – member state preferences, supranational activism and EU capacity – and two less prominent factors – public opinion and narrative frame

The politics of ethical foreign policy::A responsibility to protect whom?

Ethical foreign policy persists as a problem of international relations, especially regarding humanitarian intervention. However, despite apparent international upheavals, the debate about the ethics of humanitarian intervention has remained fundamentally unchanged. To escape the limits of this debate, this article deconstructs British claims to ethical foreign policy since 1997, reading these claims against themselves and against contemporary humanitarian intervention literature. It finds that Britain’s ethical framework, the ‘doctrine of international community’, which justifies interventions in Kosovo, Sierra Leone and Afghanistan, is undone by the anomalous, yet exemplary, invasion of Iraq. This demonstrates the politics of ethical foreign policy: first, that any intervention, no matter how ‘ethical’ or ‘right’, produces suffering and death; and, second, that we cannot know for sure whether we are doing the right thing by intervening. Embracing, rather than effacing, the political nature of ethical foreign policy opens up a more intellectually honest and positive potential future for relating to the foreign in a responsible manner.

Tact training versus bi-directional intraverbal training in teaching a foreign language

The current study involved an evaluation of the emergence of untrained verbal relations as a function of between three different foreign-language teaching strategies. Two Spanish-speaking adults received foreign-language (English) tact-training as well as native-to-foreign and foreign-to-native intraverbal training. The results indicated that tact training and native-to-foreign intraverbal training are more likely to result in the emergence of untrained relations, and may thus be more efficient compared to foreign-to-native intraverbal training.

The 'Ordinariness of the EU's Foreign Policy Power: The Use of WTO Litigation as a Means to Export EU Norms, Values and Interests

The EU has historically been portrayed as a distinctive international actor both in terms of the norms and values it exports in context of its international relations and the manner in which it seeks to influence others. However, such claims to the EU’s distinctiveness are increasingly being questioned. This article joins this chorus of voices arguing the non-distinctiveness of the EU’s foreign policy power by focusing on a specific feature of the EU’s external trade policy, the role of World Trade Organization (WTO) dispute settlement in the EU’s attempts to promote its interests, values and norms.

Choix scolaires, perception de la valeur des études et relations sociales de jeunes québécois au postsecondaire : une analyse qualitative longitudinale

La recherche s'intéresse à la valeur accordée aux études par les jeunes québécois de niveau postsecondaire en se basant sur le modèle de type attente-valeur d'Eccles (2007). La perception de la valeur correspond à un jugement posé sur les études, le programme ou le cours au regard de quatre composantes : intérêt, utilité, valeur de réalisation et cout. L'objectif général de la thèse est de mieux comprendre la dynamique entourant les choix scolaires des jeunes québécois de niveau postsecondaire à l'aide du concept de perception de la valeur des études et de ses composantes. Deux objectifs spécifiques en découlent: 1. Décrire les composantes de la perception de la valeur et leur dynamique, en distinguant la perception de la valeur des études en général (le fait d'étudier), d'un programme ou d'un cours et en reliant la perception de la valeur aux choix scolaires des jeunes; 2. Identifier et décrire le lien entre les relations sociales et la perception de la valeur des études. Une analyse secondaire a été menée sur 185 entretiens semi-dirigés réalisés auprès de 36 jeunes sur une période d'environ 5 ans (données de la recherche Famille, réseaux et persévérance au collégial, de Bourdon et Charbonneau). Les résultats valident largement le modèle et les définitions d'Eccles (2007), mais remettent en question certains aspects, en particulier autour des composantes utilité, réalisation et cout. Des aspects dynamiques de la perception de la valeur par ailleurs ont été mis en évidence. Les relations sociales - parents et pairs notamment - peuvent agir, selon différentes modalités, sur la perception de la valeur des études. Le personnel enseignant est mentionné en lien avec la valeur accordée aux cours. Une compréhension plus fine de la valeur accordée aux études, aux programmes et aux cours pourra être réinvestie dans l'organisation scolaire au postsecondaire et dans les pratiques pédagogiques.

Introduction: the impact of the 'War on Terror' on executive–legislative relations: a global perspective

In democratic polities, constitutional equilibria or balances of power between the executive and the legislature shift over time. Normative and empirical political theorists have long recognised that war, civil unrest, economic and political crises, terrorist attacks, and other events strengthen the power of the executive, disrupt and threaten constitutional politics, and damage democratic institutions: crises require swift action and executives are thought to be more capable than parliaments and legislatures of taking such actions. The terrorist attacks on New York and Washington on 11 September 2001 and the ensuing so-called 'war on terror' declared by President Bush clearly constituted a crisis, not only in the United States but also in other political systems, in part because of the US's hegemonic position in defining and shaping many other states' foreign and domestic policies. Dicey, Schmitt, and Rossiter suggest that critical events and political crises inevitably trigger the concentration of (emergency) powers in the hands of the executive. Aristotle and Machiavelli questioned the inevitability of this process. This article and the articles that follow in this Special Issue utilise empirical evidence, through the use of case studies of the United States, the United Kingdom, Russia, Australia, Israel, Italy and Indonesia, to address this debate. Specifically, the issue explores to what extent the external shock or crisis of 9/11 (and other terrorist attacks) and the ensuing 'war on terror' significantly changed the balance of executive-legislative relations from t (before the crisis) to t+1 (after the crisis) in these political systems, all of which were the targets of actual or foiled terrorist attacks. The most significant findings are that the shock of 9/11 and the 'war on terror' elicited varied responses by national executives and legislatures/parliaments and thus the balance of executive-legislative relations in different political systems; that, therefore, executive-legislative relations are positive rather than zero-sum; and that domestic political contexts conditioned these institutional responses.