scholarly journals Institutionalizing cultural Europeanism: between transnationalism and national identity (1948-1954)

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. e009
Author(s):  
Luis Domínguez Castro ◽  
José Ramón Rodríguez Lago
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
European Integration ◽  
Council Of Europe ◽  
Multilateral Cooperation ◽  
European Centre ◽  
Model Based ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Cold War

Cultural Europeanism is a variant of the process of European integration attested within the framework of the Cold War. It will be mostly anti-communist, although it will couch elements favouring West-East dialogue. The governments will promote an intergovernmental model based on multilateral cooperation and national identity, and put into practice in institutions such as the Western Union or the Council of Europe. Non-governmental organizations, such as the European Movement, will be committed to a more transnational model based on the affirmation and promotion of the idea of Europe through institutions such as the College of Europe, the European Centre for Culture or the European Cultural Foundation. Within cultural Europeanism, networks of secondary institutionalization, such as educational seminars, ended up having as much or more impact than the primary entities from which they emerged.

Labor, the UN and the Cold War

1957 ◽  
Vol 11 (1) ◽  
pp. 55-67 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harold Karan Jacobson
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
San Francisco ◽  
Trade Unions ◽  
World Federation ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Right ◽  
The Cold War

One of the significant structural differences between the organization of economic and social work under the League and under the United Nations is the extent to which non-governmental organizations (NGO's) have been allowed to participate. NGO's have been granted far greater privileges in the UN than they enjoyed in the League. Initially, they were formally recognized in Article 71 of the Charter, which gives the Economic and Social Council the right to make “suitable arrangements” for consultation with them. While defined in differing ways during different periods, consultative status under this article has, subject to various conditions, always included the right to participate in the debates of ECOSOC, its commissions and committees, and to propose items for inclusion in their provisional agenda. NGO's have made extensive use of these privileges. Their use, however, as well as the entire record of NGO action in the UN, has been inseparably linked with the cold war. Russian demands at San Francisco for privileges for the newly created, communist-controlled World Federation of Trade Unions (WFTU) were a contributing factor in the decision to include Article 71 in the Charter. The initial definition of this article resulted primarily from the interaction of pressures by the Soviet Union and the WFTU and the western response.

scholarly journals Field Diplomacy: A New Conflict Prevention Paradigm?

1997 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luc Reychler
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
Conflict Prevention ◽  
Conflict Zones ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
The North ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Religious Extremism ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
North And South ◽  
Very High

One of the most important challenges facing the global community in the next decade, is the prevention of destructive conflicts. Listening to the discourse in the United Nations and other governmental and non governmental organizations this may sound like kicking in wide open doors (Bauwens and Reychler, 1994). But the failure of conflict prevention and the high number of conflict zones, indicates that we still have a long way to go. A global survey of contemporary conflicts counts 22 high-intensity and 39 lowerintensity conflicts, and 40 serious disputes (PIOOM, 1995). In 1995 five groups were victims of genocides or politicides. The risks of future victimization of 47 communities in different parts of the world is assessed as high of very high (PIOOM, 1995). The growth of nationalist feelings at the end of the Cold War is only the beginning of more suffering. More conflicts are expected, with old and new causes, such as the unequal or unfair trade balances between North and South, unemployment in the North, the environmental pollution, religious extremism, mass immigration and the growing number of failed states. These problems could hurt people so much that they would be prepared to fight for them.

Overpopulation Debates in Latin America during the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eve Buckley
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Catholic Church ◽  
The United States ◽  
Family Welfare ◽  
Left Wing ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Cold War

From the 1950s to the 1970s, numerous academics and non-governmental organizations based in the United States generated alarm about political and ecological threats posed by human population growth. During the first half of the 20th century, improvements in nutrition, sanitation, and medical therapies had dramatically reduced infant mortality and contributed to increased life expectancy in many parts of the world. In the context of the Cold War, many leaders of Western industrialized nations viewed the rapid growth of poor Asian, African, and Latin American populations as a potential source of political instability. They feared that these poor masses would become fodder for revolutionary political movements, particularly communism. Combined with eugenicist views rooted in colonial racism, new understanding of ecological systems, and growing concern about overtaxing earth’s resources, these fears led many American and European scholars and activists to promote population reduction in the newly designated “Third World.” In Latin America, such efforts to curb human increase were met with skepticism or outright opposition by both Catholic Church leaders and many left-wing nationalists who saw the promotion of birth control as a form of racist imperialism. Although some physicians and even liberal priests viewed decreasing family size as important for public health and family welfare, the involvement of North American capitalists (such as the Rockefellers), U.S. government agencies, and former eugenicists in efforts to distribute contraceptive technologies made them deeply suspect in the eyes of many Latin Americans.

Cultural Education as Containment of Communism: The Ambivalent Position of American NGOs in Hong Kong in the 1950s

2010 ◽  
Vol 12 (2) ◽  
pp. 3-28 ◽  
Author(s):  
Grace Ai-Ling Chou
Keyword(s):  
Hong Kong ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Cultural Significance ◽  
Educational Work ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Strategic Value ◽  
The 1950S ◽  
A Site ◽  
The Cold War

This article discusses the ambivalent role of U.S. non-governmental organizations (NGOs) in shaping Hong Kong's institutions of higher education in the 1950s. Cold War concerns about Communist expansion induced the NGOs to pursue ideological goals that were not part of their main mission, even as they continued policy directions that superseded and sometimes unintentionally counteracted Cold War thinking and strategies. Hong Kong, as a site important but marginal to both China and Britain, had strategic value in the Cold War and as such impelled many different forces to contest it. By examining how U.S. NGO educational work in Hong Kong both reinforced and destabilized Cold War ideology, one gains a clearer picture not only of Hong Kong's cultural significance in Cold War politics but also the ambiguity of Cold War intellectual paradigms of culture and education.

scholarly journals Using Geopolitics in the Comparative Analysis of Two International Systems Based on Factors Considered Relevant

2017 ◽  
Vol 23 (1) ◽  
pp. 94-99
Author(s):  
Anca Dinicu
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
International System ◽  
The State ◽  
International Governance ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
National Economies ◽  
International Systems ◽  
Objective Being

Abstract The international scene is still modeled on the states’ interests, despite the challenges of non-state actors, whose international policy intervention can not be described as new. The state still continues to play a central role in shaping the international system, even if it is forced to act in an environment where large corporations are designing many of the national economies of states whose nationality they do not have, and non-governmental organizations are at the outskirts of an emerging global civil society, which could jeopardize the state’s right and obligation to prevent injustice, and considering that at the global level there is no entity able to issue regulations in this regard, all of which amid testing international governance models. Looking retrospectively, during the Cold War, the state was much stronger and the threats which it had to face were characterized by a much higher degree of predictability. This paper aims to analyze the contemporary international system by reference to that specific to the Cold War, based on factors considered relevant, the objective being to identify the possibility of turning the present international system to a new Cold War.

The More the Merrier? The Effects of Having Multiple International Election Monitoring Organizations

2009 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 59-64 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judith Kelley
Keyword(s):  
Cold War ◽  
United Nations ◽  
Domestic Politics ◽  
Dominant Role ◽  
Organizational Politics ◽  
Costs And Benefits ◽  
Governmental Organizations ◽  
Non Governmental Organizations ◽  
Election Monitoring ◽  
The Cold War

As the pressure to invite international election monitors rose at the end of the Cold War, states refused to grant the United Nations a dominant role. Thus, today multiple intergovernmental, regional, and international non-governmental organizations often monitor the same elections with equal authority. This article examines the costs and benefits of this complex regime to highlight some possible broader implications of regime complexity. It argues that the availability of many different organizations facilitates action that might otherwise have been blocked for political reasons. Furthermore, when different international election monitoring agencies agree, their consensus can bolster their individual legitimacy as well as the legitimacy of the international norms they stress, and thus magnify their influence on domestic politics. Unfortunately the election monitoring example also suggests that complex regimes can engender damaging inter-organizational politics and that the different biases, capabilities, and standards of organizations sometime can lead organizations to outright contradict each other or work at cross-purposes.

A Tower of Tangled Histories: The Upper Silesia Tower in Poznań and the Making of an Unromantic Poland, 1911–1955

Slavic Review ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 79 (3) ◽  
pp. 566-590
Author(s):  
Patryk Babiracki
Keyword(s):  
Twentieth Century ◽  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
World War I ◽  
Material Structure ◽  
World War ◽  
Upper Silesia ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The City ◽  
Over Time

Engaging with regional, international, and spatial histories, this article proposes a new reading of the twentieth-century Polish past by exploring the vicissitudes of a building known as the Upper Silesia Tower. Renowned German architect Hans Poelzig designed the Tower for the 1911 Ostdeutsche Ausstellung in Posen, an ethnically Polish city under Prussian rule. After Poland regained its independence following World War I, the pavilion, standing centrally on the grounds of Poznań’s International Trade Fair, became the fair's symbol, and over time, also evolved into visual shorthand for the city itself. I argue that the Tower's significance extends beyond Posen/Poznań, however. As an embodiment of the conflicts and contradictions of Polish-German historical entanglements, the building, in its changing forms, also concretized various efforts to redefine the dominant Polish national identity away from Romantic ideals toward values such as order, industriousness, and hard work. I also suggest that eventually, as a material structure harnessed into the service of socialism, the Tower, with its complicated past, also brings into relief questions about the regional dimensions of the clashes over the meaning of modernity during the Cold War.

Algeria: Military Past as Prologue

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Paul E. Lenze, Jr.
Keyword(s):  
National Identity ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Middle Eastern ◽  
The State ◽  
Foreseeable Future ◽  
Military Rule ◽  
Military Involvement ◽  
History Of ◽  
The Cold War ◽  
The Military

Algeria is a state in the Maghreb that has been dominated by military rule for the majority of its existence. The National People’s Army (ANP) used nationalism to justify its intervention into politics while ensuring that withdrawal would occur only if national identity were protected. Algeria, similar to other Middle Eastern states, underwent historical trajectories influenced by colonialism, the Cold War, and post-9/11 politics; briefly experimented with democracy; and as a result, experienced the military as the dominant institution in the state. The resignation of Algerian President Abdelaziz Bouteflika after 20 years of rule in April 2019, following six weeks of popular protest, has raised questions as to whether democratization is possible. Algeria’s history of military involvement in politics, the strength of the military as an institution, and its cooperative links with domestic elites and international actors portend the endurance of authoritarianism for the foreseeable future.

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