The Growing Influence of the Courts over the Fate of Refugees
A number of migration scholars suggest that domestic courts have become the key protective institution for refugees. How can we explain this claim? One prominent explanation identifies group litigation as the key source of the increasing influence of the courts. How well does this explanation travel empirically? The article evaluates this explanation by examining the puzzling behaviour of German refugee NGOs. They have not entered the legal arena directly (either as parties or as interveners), nor have they concentrated on developing extensive litigation campaigns. Still, they are remarkably ‘judicialized’: their frequent engagement with the law in other respects has heightened their legal consciousness. Why have German refugee NGOs made such different choices than their North American counterparts and what do these choices tell us about the expanding influence of the courts over the fate of refugees in Germany and North America? To make sense of the different choices that these organizations have made, we need to understand the role that institutional norms and procedures, in particular policy legacies, have played in directing the behaviour and identity of these groups. For a number of reasons, German refugee NGOs historically have been discouraged from directly accessing the courts in favour of indirect participation. Since Canadian and American refugee organizations follow a pattern closer to the expectations of the (largely North American) literature on the subject, we need to be more careful in thinking through ou Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i2.199
Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies; 2008: RERA V4:2 Summer 2008 (backfile abstracts)
Centre for European Studies, Carleton University
Rethinking the ‘Problem’ of Religious Pluralism in Canada and the European Union
In recent years the nature of secularism and the rights of religious minorities have come to the fore as issues in debates concerning citizenship, multiculturalism and immigration, both in Canada and the European Union. Unlike earlier campaigns of secularization, these recent discourses of secularisation concern not only the institutional separation of Church and State but seek to protect modern secular society from the perceived threat of various externally rooted religious threats through the secularisation of subjects within public spaces. In an attempt to more fully understand this new form of secularisation, the consequences it has had and the debates it has generated in both Canada and the EU, the proposed paper will proceed on four fronts. First, it will outline the earlier discourses and practices of secularisation. Second, the article will posit that we are presently witnessing a different discourse of secularisation, one that is distinct from this earlier form. Third, the article will offer a critique of both discourses, arguing that both involve the deployment of essentialised conceptions of the religious, the secular, and their interaction. Fourth, an alternative approach will be offered, one that seeks to denaturalise the aforementioned categories. The article argues that it is only in this manner that a space and possibility for genuine dialogue concerning secularism and religious pluralism in Canada and the EU can be created. Full ext available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i2.197
Europe and Islam: Internalizing the External ‘Threat’
This article will first characterize the nature of the Islamic ‘threat’ facing modern day Europe, by arguing that such ‘threats’ are fed by the forces of internalization. By specifically focusing on case studies found in Jytte Klausen’s “The Islamic Challenge: Politics and Religion in Western Europe”, this article will take as its departure point the basis that “Europeans tend to ignore the fact that their established norms and policies are not necessarily secular, but reflects long-standing practices that were instituted in order to appease national churches”. Three facets of European society will be examined; national laws, media coverage, and politicians and their actions. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i2.196
Christianity and Tolerance: A Genealogy of European Identity
In the process of European constitutionalisation, the European Union continues to struggle for an identity that can generate widespread support amongst its peoples. Against this background it has been suggested by some that a European identity should embrace the Christian values that underpin Europe’s national traditions and cultures. In this paper I shall argue that, instead of relying on a communitarian vision of a ‘Christian Europe’, a European identity should build on a culture of religious tolerance. A European culture of religious tolerance draws on the enduring of difference and the acknowledgement of persisting and intractable conflict as essential experiences of Europe’s Christian past. Thus understood, tolerance lies at the roots of a European identity. At the same time, and through the conditional inclusion of religious diversity in the European Nation-States, a European culture of religious tolerance creates over time new commonalities between Europe’s religiously permeated national traditions. Thus understood, tolerance only brings about the conditions for the development of a supranational European identity that amounts to more than (the sum of) its national counterparts. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i2.195
Redefining Europe – Islam, Secularism and Diversity: “The Search for Europe’s future: Nations, religions, and politics”
not available Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i2.198
Democratic and Market Governance in Romania: Between Domestic Politics and EU Accession
Institutional reforms to regulate the market environment and the proper functioning of democracy have been mandated by the European Union to accession countries. In spite of the uniform creation of such regulatory frameworks, governance problems persist, especially in the newest members of the EU. I analyze the institution al reform record in both market and political governance, as well as the effectiveness of these institutions, in the case of Romania, one of the laggards of reform. I argue that the EU did significantly support reform efforts, but insufficient domestic commitment to reform has resulted in ineffective institutions. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i1.194
Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies; 2008: RERA V4:1 Spring 2008 (backfile abstracts)
Accumulation by Any Means: Neoliberalisation and Environment in Post-Communist Europe
This paper explores water services restructuring in the post-communist Europe. The cases of the cities of St Petersburg, Russia and Tallinn, Estonia serve to trace changes in tone and timbre over the course of the post-communist transition to a market based economy. This paper is divided into two sections: we begin by placing the European Bank of Reconstruction and Development (EBRD) in the context of the World Bank and International Monetary Fund–the International Financial Institutions significantly involved with infrastructure rebuilding. Section Two presents a brief look at specific cases of municipal water restructuring in the Baltic Region in postcommunist transition period, 1991 – 2006, brokered and funded in part by EBRD money. Tracing investments and the strategic partnerships formed in the region by the EBRD sheds light onto the development of IFI capacity and strategy since the early 1990s. The politics behind the notion described in shorthand with Harvey’s reworking of the Marxian ‘Primitive Accumulation’ is crucial to understanding the dynamics and trends often apparent in water infrastructure restructuring. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i1.193
The Limits of Consequentialism: ICTY Conditionality and (Non)Compliance in Post-Milosevic Serbia
Since 2000—the dusk of the Milosevic-era—three successive Serbian governments, the Djindjic, Zivkovic and Kostunica administrations, have amassed an inconsistent and oscillating record of (non)compliance with EU and US conditionality for full cooperation with the International Criminal Tribunal on the Former Yugoslavia (ICTY). How do we explain this changing pattern of compliance and noncompliance by Serbia? This paper contends that international rules and norms which attempt far-reaching institutional and social change, such as ICTY conditionality in Serbia, will likely elicit a historical process that is multidimensional and diachronic, more politically complex than the parsimony suggested by incentives-based, model-driven theorizing. The paper argues for a more contextual and practice-oriented approach to the study of compliance politics; focusing on how material, normative and temporal dimensions interact historically to form particular compliance processes & outcomes. The empirical section uses inductive process-tracing to make a temporal reconstruction of the process and experience of Serbian (non)compliance with ICTY conditionality during the Kostunica government; focusing on the interaction between three dimensions of compliance politics: (1) strategic calculation; (2) identity & cultural resonance; and (3) temporality. Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i1.192
External Influences on Domestic Reforms in Post-Communist European Countries
not available Full text available at: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v4i1.191
Anti-Americanism and the Spirit of European Unity
The European integration process was initiated based on the model of the United States. The idea was to create a unit similar in some ways to the United States, while at the same time a unique, European entity. Anti-Americanism can be defined as the ideological tendency to resist the reproduction of American economic, social and cultural patterns. At the heart of this article is the question of whether anti-Americanism is an effective contributor to the European integration process. Full text available: https://doi.org/10.22215/rera.v3i3.190
Canadian Journal of European and Russian Studies; 2007: RERA V3:3 The European Union Defence and Security Policy (backfile abstracts)