scholarly journals China’s impact on the European Union’s Arctic policy: critical junctures, crossovers, and geographic shifts

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Reinhard Biedermann
Keyword(s):  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Arctic Policy

The Emancipation of Europe's Muslims

2012 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jonathan Laurence
Keyword(s):  
Trade Unions ◽  
Western Europe ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Muslim Immigrants ◽  
European Democracy ◽  
The Government ◽  
Muslim Communities ◽  
Integration Problems ◽  
Muslim Minorities

This book traces how governments across Western Europe have responded to the growing presence of Muslim immigrants in their countries over the past fifty years. Drawing on hundreds of in-depth interviews with government officials and religious leaders in France, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, the United Kingdom, Morocco, and Turkey, the book challenges the widespread notion that Europe's Muslim minorities represent a threat to liberal democracy. The book documents how European governments in the 1970s and 1980s excluded Islam from domestic institutions, instead inviting foreign powers like Saudi Arabia, Algeria, and Turkey to oversee the practice of Islam among immigrants in European host societies. But since the 1990s, amid rising integration problems and fears about terrorism, governments have aggressively stepped up efforts to reach out to their Muslim communities and incorporate them into the institutional, political, and cultural fabrics of European democracy. The book places these efforts—particularly the government-led creation of Islamic councils—within a broader theoretical context and gleans insights from government interactions with groups such as trade unions and Jewish communities at previous critical junctures in European state-building. By examining how state–mosque relations in Europe are linked to the ongoing struggle for religious and political authority in the Muslim-majority world, the book sheds light on the geopolitical implications of a religious minority's transition from outsiders to citizens. This book offers a much-needed reassessment that foresees the continuing integration of Muslims into European civil society and politics in the coming decades.

Time in International Organizations and International Organizations in Time

2019 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eugénia C. Heldt
Keyword(s):  
International Organizations ◽  
Path Dependence ◽  
Time Pressure ◽  
Temporal Dimension ◽  
Incremental Change ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Pressure Time ◽  
Multilateral System ◽  
System Time ◽  
Over Time

Time plays a central role in international organizations (IOs). Interactions among actors are embedded in a temporal dimension, and actors use formal and informal time rules, time discourses, and time pressure to obtain concessions from their counterparts. By the same token, legacies and innovations within and outside IOs can be examined as a dynamic process evolving over time. Against this background, this chapter has a twofold aim. First, it examines how actors use time in IOs with a particular focus on multilateral negotiations to justify their actions. Drawing on international relations studies and negotiation analysis, this piece explores six different dimensions of time in the multilateral system: time pressure, time discourse, time rules, time costs, time horizons, and time as a resource. Second, this chapter delineates the evolution of IOs over time with the focus on innovations that emerge to adapt their institutional system to new political and economic circumstances. This piece looks particularly at endogenous and exogenous changes in IOs, recurring to central concepts used by historical institutionalism, including path dependence, critical junctures, and sequencing. This allows us to map patterns of incremental change, such as displacement, conversion, drift, and layering.

Negotiating Political Power at ‘Critical Junctures’: Women and Constitution Drafting in South Africa and India

2021 ◽  
pp. 002190962110258
Author(s):  
Nila Mohanan
Keyword(s):  
South Africa ◽  
Comparative Analysis ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Interest Group ◽  
Political Power ◽  
Substantive Representation ◽  
Representation Of Women ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Women's Participation ◽  
Gain Access

From a feminist institutionalist perspective, this article engages in a comparative analysis of South Africa, one of the only post-transition democracies where women organized as a distinct interest group representing gender interests were able to negotiate and gain access to political power, and India, where women’s participation was predominantly as ‘nationalist women’. It argues that constitution drafting is a decisive critical juncture when descriptive representation can be translated very effectively into the substantive representation of women as equal citizens, provided women qua women and as gender-conscious agents are able to intervene to promote the cause of their effective political participation.

Deconstructing Dante: How things fall apart in the Paradiso

2021 ◽  
pp. 001458582110215
Author(s):  
Glenn A Steinberg
Keyword(s):  
Fundamental Question ◽  
Us Guidance ◽  
Critical Junctures ◽  
Recent Commentary ◽  
Literal Truth ◽  
Truth Claims ◽  
Things Fall Apart ◽  
The Difference

Much recent commentary on Dante’s Commedia focuses on Dante’s truth claims in the poem. Indeed, Teodolinda Barolini has proposed that “the fundamental question for all readers of Dante’s poem” is “How are we to respond to the poet’s insistence that he is telling us the truth?” I propose that the poem itself gives us guidance as to the seriousness of its claims to literal truth. It does so by actively deconstructing its own meaning at critical junctures. I look at several such moments of deconstruction, but I argue that the first few cantos of the Paradiso in particular provide a reflection on the difference between reality and fiction. Early in the Paradiso, Dante draws attention to the metaphoric nature of his poem and reminds his reader, through his character’s own actions, that metaphor is not reality. In this way, Dante implies that we should not take the narrative particulars of his poem too literally but should treat metaphor as metaphor rather than as mimesis.

The present and future competence of the European Union in the Arctic

Polar Record ◽  
2011 ◽  
Vol 48 (4) ◽  
pp. 361-371 ◽  
Author(s):  
Timo Koivurova ◽  
Kai Kokko ◽  
Sebastien Duyck ◽  
Nikolas Sellheim ◽  
Adam Stepien
Keyword(s):  
International Negotiations ◽  
The Arctic ◽  
The European Union ◽  
Crucial Importance ◽  
Arctic Council ◽  
The Third ◽  
Broad Array ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Arctic Policy ◽  
The Eu

ABSTRACTThe European Union's (EU's) intention of becoming a permanent observer in the Arctic Council and the reluctance of Arctic actors to grant it that status have made the union's aspirations in the Arctic the subject of a continuing debate. The discussion appears to be dominated by geographical considerations and the EU's gradually emerging Arctic policy. This article puts forward a different view of the EU's presence in the region, one drawing on an analysis of relevant EU competences. As a complex international actor, the EU has acquired a broad array of decision-making powers from its member states, powers that partly extend to Iceland and Norway via the EEA Agreement. Moreover, the EU has in many cases become a relevant actor in international negotiations and treaty making processes the outcomes of which are of crucial importance for the governance of the Arctic. Our argument in the third and concluding section is that only by including the EU in Arctic governance can the international community provide better prospects for the union to sensitise its policies and discourses to the Arctic realities and for other Arctic actors to understand how the union functions. This argument is supported by an analysis of the EU's restrictions on the import of seal products and the ensuing litigation.

Sign in / Sign up

Export Citation Format

Share Document