The battle for Azerbaijan : Azeri Perspectives on the Observation of the 2005 Parliamentary Elections and the Post-Election Period
This report seeks to highlight the role of international observer missions of the 9 November 2005 parliamentary election in Azerbaijan. It also presents in-depth assessments of the pre- and post-election situation in the country. The six articles that are presented in the volume have been produced by leading scholars or development practitioners in Azerbaijan. The report forms part of the ‘Network for Election Observation and Exchange’. This is project that is supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Observing or participating in regime change? Kyrgyz perspectives on the role of international election observation missions in 2005
This report offers an in-dept analysis of the role of international election observation missions in during the political upheavals in Kyrgyzstan in 2005. It presents the work of three leading, young academics from Kyrgyzstan. The report forms part of the ‘NUPI Network for Election Observation and Exchange’. This is project that is supported by the Norwegian Ministry of Foreign Affairs. The starting point for the assessments presented here is the realisation that international election observer missions played a central part in the events that eventually lead to the toppling of President Askar Akaev’s administration in march 2005. Kyrgyzstan is also a case that highlights the immense challenges that face election observation missions in non consolidated democracies of the former Soviet Union. Many of these countries, Kyrgyzstan included, have developed traditions of deep-seated and sophisticated manipulation of election procedures. Given these preconditions, the three articles aim to assess from differing perspectives how election observation was conducted in the country in 2005.
Geographical spread of corruption : Policies, institutions and cross-country economic interaction. Part I: Issues, theory
The international aspects of corruption have received considerable attention in both research and policy: What determines whether a country is highly corrupt or not? Most research has sought to answer this question by considering each country as reflecting the same kind of mechanism explaining both the high and low outcomes. In this paper some of the theoretical explanations suggested in the literature are reviewed at the same time as it suggests how the question needs to be rephrased if each country’s corruption rate is influenced by an internationally open economic system.
Norsk utenrikspolitisk bibliografi (1905–2005): Versjon 1.3.1 (des. 06) ved Andreas Løvold & Halvard Leira
From Common Defence to Comprehensive Security Towards the Europeanisation of French Foreign and Security Policy?
This article looks at the relationship between European integration and national foreign and security policy - specifically, how and to what extent the development of a specifically European (EU) foreign and security policy leads to adaptation and change in national foreign and security policy. The theoretical point of departure is an interest in national changes in response to EU norms. It will be argued that national approaches tend to adapt to norms defined by a community to which they are closely linked; that this adaptation takes place over time, through a socialisation process; and that it may also, in the end, lead to changes in national identity. This argument challenges the common assumption of IR theory that national identities and/or interests are fixed and independent of structural factors like international norms and values. The empirical focus is on changes in French foreign and security policy since the early 1990s. How and to what extent has the dominant French national discourse on foreign and security policy changed since the early 1990s? And if so, how are these changes related to the European integration process in general, and to the development of a European foreign and security dimension in particular?
From Internationalization of Terrorism to the Internationalization of Anti-terrorism : The Role of the Summer Olympic Games
The academic literature on international relations and international sports studies has long ignored the linkages between sports and international relations. The present contribution seeks to remedy this shortcoming in the literature on international relations and international sports studies, focusing on the relationship between terrorism, anti-terrorism and the Summer Olympic Games, and examining the role of terrorism and anticipated terrorist actions in the organization of the Olympic Games. In this article we show that the anti-terrorism measures undertaken before, during and after the Olympic Games since 1972 have gone from failure to success. The development of anti-terrorism measures has resulted in Olympic Games that have been held without terrorist attacks aimed at political change. Failures in previous Games have been evaluated and have served to promote new developments in the fight against terrorism in later Games. The Munich disaster alerted everyone to the importance of Olympic security; since then, the Olympic Games have become the standard-setter for national organization and international cooperation on anti-terrorism in society in general.
French foreign policy and the limits of Europeanisation : The changing French position on EU enlargement
This article focuses on the changing French position on EU enlargement. The aim of the analysis is to study the interplay between the foreign policy of the EU and the foreign policy of France, but also between the official French foreign policy and the French public opinion. Most of the literature on EU enlargement underestimates the importance of public opinion. This article is therefore an attempt to present a more comprehensive understanding of the changing French position on enlargement by combining a top down with a bottom up approach. By doing this the analysis do not consider whether enlargement is good or bad, but rather how a member state’s position on this issue may change both through a process of Europeanisation and as a result of changes in domestic public opinion.
Strategic Adaption or Identity Change? : An analysis of Britain's Approach to the ESDP 1998-2004
In this working paper, Kristin Marie Haugevik seeks to analyse the nature of the changes in Britain’s approach to the European Security and Defence Policy (ESDP) after 1998. Ever since the beginning of the European integration process in 1951, Britain’s approach to European security and defence cooperation has been characterized by anti-federalism and transatlanticism. Hence, it was unexpected when Tony Blair, together with Jacques Chirac, took the initiative to frame a common security and defence policy for the EU in Saint Malo in 1998. This paper discusses to what extent Britain’s new approach to the ESDP after 1998 can be explained as the result of a strategic adaptation, and to what extent it can be seen as a result of more profound changes in the British identity and security interests. These two accounts are tested by analysing Britain’s approach to some of the most important ESDP documents since 1998: the Saint Malo declaration, the Laeken declaration, the Nice Treaty, the European Security Strategy, and the Constitution Treaty
As safe as the Bank? : Household financial behaviour and economic reasoning in post-soviet Russia
This study examines the financial behaviour of Russian households from the collapse of communism to the financial melt down in August 1998. By transforming savings into investment, financial intermediaries are important to economic growth. In post-Soviet Russia, financial intermediaries were increasingly unable to attract new household savings, as people turned to foreign currency. What determined the allocation of household savings? The study considers the three main alternatives households could turn to: The state savings bank; commercial financial companies; and foreign currency, mainly dollars. But how do we go about to explain the behaviour of millions of individuals over time? Economists usually assume that people maximise returns on their assets. Financial behaviour would then reflect economic variables such as interest rate, exchange rate and inflation. Such a view fits uneasily with observed behaviour in post-Soviet Russia. However, why would people not allocate their savings in the most profitable way? This study holds that to understand why people do what they do, we should listen carefully - although not uncritically - to what they say and how they say it. On this view, we can explain the behaviour of individuals only if we can understand them. And - since social phenomena are constituted by the behaviour of individuals - such understanding is crucial to the causal explanation of macro level phenomena. The historical narrative thus becomes an important vehicle for explanation of the contemporary world. Through analysis of discourses on financial institutions, as they appeared in newspapers of the day and as I have been able to gather from interviews conducted in 2004, this study identifies certain dramatic events that altered the way Russians perceived different financial institutions and their view on trust, risk and profitability, and finds that such changes in perception go a long way to explain the changes in observed behaviour in this period.