Choosing between America and Europe: a new context for British foreign policy

Power in Britain has changed hands from a prime minister who sought to balance intense UK‐US consultation on foreign policy with the ambition to be ‘at the heart of Europe’ to one whose approach towards both the United States and the European Union has yet to be tested. It is an appropriate moment, there fore, to assess how these two contextual poles of British foreign policy‐making have changed over recent years and what this might mean for UK foreign policy choices. The premise of this article is that the days are now largely over when the UK can or should start out by trying to build an Anglo‐US position on a foreign policy challenge before trying to tie in the European and transatlantic positions. The UK is now a central player in the development of increasingly activist European foreign policies, whether these can later be coordinated effectively with the United States or not. A strong, bilateral relationship continues to serve the interests of both sides on multiple levels, but this relationship does not sit upon the same foundations as during the Cold War. There are now significant underlying factors, especially since the terrorist attacks of September 11 2001 in the US and July 7 2005 in the UK, that pull the US away from Europe and the UK, while pushing the UK towards Europe as the first port of call in developing foreign policy strategies. It is also notable that, today, UK positions on most global issues and foreign policy challenges tend to conform more closely to the dominant EU line than to the United States. On balance, the UK might think about European integration more from a US than from a European perspective, but it now thinks about global problems more from a European than from a US or transatlantic perspective.     

The birth of a united Europe: on why the EU has generated a ‘non‐emotional’ identity

ABSTRACT. In several respects, the European Union (EU) represents both a novel system of quasi‐supranational governance and a novel form of political community or polity. But it is also a relatively fragile construction: it remains a community still in the making with an incipient sense of identity, within which powerful forces are at work. This article has three main aims. Firstly, to analyse the reasons and key ideas that prompted a selected elite to construct a set of institutions and treaties destined to unite European nations in such a way that the mere idea of a ‘civil war’ among them would become impossible. Secondly, to examine the specific top‐down processes that led to the emergence of a united Europe and the subsequent emergence of the EU, thus emphasising the constant distance between the elites and the masses in the development of the European project. Finally, to explain why the EU has generated what I call a ‘non‐emotional’ identity, radically different from the emotionally charged and still prevailing national identities present in its member states.     

英国阻挠九世班禅返回西藏的动因初探

九世班禅额尔德尼自1923年逃离西藏后,在祖国内地居住了14年之久。班禅大师最大的心愿是返回札什伦布寺。1935年6月,国民政府发布密令,决定班禅返藏,并特派专使和卫队护送。但由于英国政府的阻挠和无理干涉,班禅大师返藏受阻,忧郁而终。英国为什么要反对班禅返回西藏呢?反对班禅返藏潜藏着什么样的动机呢?这是本文试图探讨的问题。     

Why 'Indicative Planning' Failed: British Industry and the Formation of the National Economic Development Council (1960-64)

The NEDC (Neddy) was established in 1962 through a joint initiativeof leading industrialists and the Conservative Government. Itsbroad aim was to improve economic co-ordination between companiesand policy-makers, and thus enable Britain to steer a courseaway from ‘stop-go’ and towards stable growth. Thisarticle examines the sources of the Neddy's swift demise intoirrelevance by 1964. Aspirations for the NEDC were multipleand conflicting. Leading industrialists considered it a vehiclefor increasing their influence over the course of economic policy.The government, however, was jealous of its policy-making autonomy,and interested in the NEDC primarily as a signal to currencyspeculators of their commitment to tackling the various supply-sideproblems of the UK economy. The article stresses two sets of‘institutional’ factors which doomed the NEDC'stransformative potential even as it was being set up. First,business was suspicious of co-operation with (and, more particularlyrevealing sensitive firm level information to) a body that wasso close to central government. Employers were justifiably worriedthat the NEDC would be used by future governments as the basisfor more dirigiste rather than merely indicative planning. Second,companies wedded to the economic organizational principle of‘collective laissez-faire’ resisted peak-level effortsto induce co-ordination. Thus, paradoxically, the very co-ordinationproblems in British business that prompted the NEDC's creationwere the primary reasons for its failure.     

访欧随想(诗六首)

龙腾巴黎凯旋门铁塔映红花都夜,香街跃中国龙。万人空巷半月前,盛况如潮荡人心。中法友好新篇谱,逢人皆赞旷世情。夜游举杯赛纳河,春风正临凯旋门。2004年2月11日 2004年元月26日至29日,中国国家主席胡锦涛应法国总统希拉克邀请,对法国进行了友好访问。2004年是中法建交40周年。为此,巴黎的标志埃菲尔铁塔连续5天以     

Why conventional wisdom on radicalization fails: the persistence of a failed discourse

Politicians, the media, and some academics are getting it wrong about radicalization. Relying on simple narratives to explain how an individual departs from point a (‘a good Muslim boy’) to point b (‘a suicide bomber’), too many recent contributions to academia rely on assumptions and ‘conventional wisdom’ rather than testable and falsifiable empirical research and methods. Through specific cases, this article seeks to demonstrate how the over‐simplification of ‘conventional wisdom’ privileges convenient political narratives over the complex realities of such situations. In light of this failure to account for reality, this article seeks to challenge current thinking on radicalization by exposing its limitations, as currently being used, as a meaningful basis and departure point for rigorous social science research. The article concludes by showing how the current persistence of this ‘conventional wisdom’ approach to radicalization ultimately betrays the normative political assumptions of those who insist on using this term, and how this adherence to ‘conventional wisdom’ now deprives radicalization from being a relevant and useful academic or policy discourse. This is because radicalization as an area for study has been corrupted by its instrumental political application.     

Why they do not plow: The domestic versus the intercaste mode of production in rural India

Morgan D. Maclachlan. Why They Did Not Starve: Biocultural Adaptation in a South Indian Village. Philadelphia: Institute for the Study of Human Issues. 1983. iv + 296 pp. including tables, photographs, references, and index. $30.00 cloth.     

试析欧盟共同农业政策的改革

欧盟共同农业政策(GAP)的历史几乎就是一部改革史。改革的尝试从1968年就开始了,那时共同农业政策刚刚实施。这本身就说明政策有其先天不足,而在改革的过程中其进展之缓慢,改革计划之多也颇令人关注,以致于有人戏言,共同农业政策有两种类型的过剩：一种是产品的过剩,另一种是改革计划的过剩。出现这种现象的原因是什么呢?本试图在此方面做一些探讨,除了考察共同农业政策历史上的各种改革计划,还将着重分析改革中的政治因素,即改革的内部和外部压力,左右改革进程的各种力量,尤其是各成员国对待每项改革的态度及其原因,以及各成员国对改革进程的影响,等等。     

The Future of Regions: Why the Competitiveness Imperative Should not Prevail over Solidarity, Sustainability and Democracy

The thesis here submitted for debate and criticism is as follows: if today's governing principles that inspire policy choices and priority setting in our societies (which claim to be knowledge- based societies) are to remain in place in the course of the coming five to ten years, the relative position of the less developed regions (and cities) vis-à-vis the most developed ones will again deteriorate, even though per capita real purchasing power might also slightly increase in the less developed regions. The if-hypothesis, however, is not the only possible pattern of future developments. Because present economic and political leaders are, in general, the promoters and supporters of today's predominant principles, the only way to make possible alternative future developments based on solidarity, sustainability and democracy is that citizens themselves take the initiative, locally and globally, to modify present practices and define new goals and new priorities. In consideration of the results obtained in recent years by civil social movements and protests, one may reasonably consider it as a possible scenario.     

Strategic Planning as Region Building on the Eastern Periphery of the EU

This article describes how region-building is performed by four strategic planning initiatives in north-eastern Slovakia, highlighting a tension between balanced and concentrated development perspectives in Slovak regional policy. The plans are read as records of an institutionalizing process, the product of which is the creation of a lasting collaborative relationship between actors. If strategic planning could fulfil a mobilizing and integrating function in eastern Slovakia, it would constitute a significant contribution to the successful negotiation of social and economic transformations associated with post-communist structural change and European Union (EU) accession. Region-building is complicated by an over-emphasis on endogenous perspectives among local actors, hindering vertical integration, and an indeterminacy about the scale at which such an integration is best performed.     

Beyond the EU/NATO dichotomy: the beginnings of a European strategic culture

The European Union and its member states have moved with considerable speed towards the creation of a European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP). Whether what has been achieved so far adds up to a revolution remains a moot point. The Common Foreign and Security Policy of the Maastricht Treaty has not always been noted for its binding character, and too often the debate over security and defence has degenerated into an artificial, zero-sum-type game between Atlanticists and Europeanists. What is required for the success of the ESDP is not simply continued commitment to achieving the Headline Goals set out at Helsinki in 1999, but also the development of what the authors call a 'strategic culture', i.e. an institutional confidence and processes to manage and deploy military force as part of the effective range of legitimate policy instruments of the Union. The authors argue that political commitment at the highest levels has been underpinned by the institutionalization, within the Council Secretariat, of the 'military option' in the form of the Military Committee and a Directorate General for the EU's Military Staff (DGEUMS). Even more importantly, there are already signs, especially through such concepts as 'security sector reform' and 'structural stability', that the EU, through its development and humanitarian programmes, has already recognized the necessity of military solutions.     

秦俑彩绘相关问题研究

在出土的彩绘秦俑上,发现表面装饰颜色中带有一些土黄或土红色区域,为了弄清它们是人为绘作的还是由于其它原因形成的,我们对其进行了分析研究。经过大量分析检测和显微镜观察,并结合发掘现场调查和中国传统文化观念分析,我们认为它们是陶俑在地下长期埋藏过程中,受到地下物质玷污或替代形成的。     

Britain and the Convention on the Future of Europe

If the reaction from the British Conservative Party and the right-wing press were to be believed, it would be easy to think that the constitutional treaty produced by the European Convention represented a failure for Britain. This article takes issues with such claims. It illustrates, by tracing British involvement within the Convention from its inception to the finalization of the draft treaty, that the British Government succeeded remarkably well in ensuring that the document reflected its major policy preferences.