*** ALOIS MOSSER (Ed.): Politische Kultur in Südosteuropa. Identitäten, Loyalitäten, Solidaritäten. Peter Lang (1 Moosstrasse, CH-2542 Pieterlen. Tel: (41-32) 3761727 - Fax: 3761727 - e-mail: info@peterlang.com - Internet: http://www.peterlang.de ). "Pro Oriente, Schriftenreihe der Kommission für Südosteuropäische Geschichte" series, No. 3. 2006, 246 pp. ISBN 3-631-53733-6.
This book was published following the 6th conference of the Pro Oriente Foundation's "Commission d'histoire de l'Europe du Sud-Est", held in Vienna in November 2001. The subject of the conference, political culture, was chosen to stimulate historians, sociologists and anthropologists specialising in specific areas of evolution of South-East Europe to demonstrate how the region's specific history give rise to the behaviour, values and policies characterising political communities today. The sub-title 'Identités, Loyautés, Solidarités' (Identities, Loyalties and Solidarities) are deliberately put in the plural to encourage contributors to illustrate the diversity of different situations and developments within the region and within each of the countries studied. The editor wanted to take account of the fact that South-East European countries are likely to join the European Union in the short-term, looking at how their own specific political culture would be affected by the new common EU political culture that is in the process of developing.
The first, theoretical, part of the book covers three general ideas. Under the title "Expérience historique et action politique" ('Historical Experience and Political Action'), Alois Mosser looks at the evolution of the term 'political culture' itself as a research tool. The author explains that the word helps us gain greater understanding of our heritage, whose historical understanding includes a subjective aspect, collective transmission, and scientific confirmation. This is why greater understanding of this inherited 'political culture' can help people understand their own identity and get a better grasp of the ideas and values used to define a nation, an ethnicity and a community. The 'political culture' tool can be used to get a better idea of the specific nature of South-Eastern Europe as a sui generis region. Supplementing this work, Prof. Altermatt (a historian who is currently Rector of the University of Freiburg in Switzerland) has written a brilliant essay on political culture and national identity in Western and Eastern Europe, illustrating the different ideological approaches to problems arising between nation states and 'cultural nations', focussing on the differences between German and French ideas that arose in the nineteenth century. He writes that Germans consider their state to be based on the nation, whereas the French see the nation as being produced by the state. He shows that the two approaches have been used in a generally self-evident manner, leading to different forms of nationalism (state or ethno-linguistic) being expressed in a given territory, leading to differing degrees of latent, forced or unforced, assimilation of differences in national identity. The author shows how different changes occurred in Western and Eastern Europe, leading to new political ideas that will form the basis of our future, distinguishing between a society composed of citizens and a society based on a single ethnicity. The conclusion drawn by Urs Altermatt therefore has a European perspective. He writes that a political community's identity has to be determined by citizenship rather than by the ethnic roots of the population. A clear separation of 'ethnos' from 'demos' will make it possible in the Europe of the future for different cultural forms of life to co-exist. The European Union, he writes, must therefore help develop a common political culture for all European citizens. The third theoretical essay in the first part of the book is by Prof. Andrei Marga, a lecturer in cultural anthropology at Cluj University in Romania, who writes on the formation of identity and culture in Eastern Europe and methodological needs. He highlights the elements that should allow a common political life to emerge in societies made up of many different identities, taking the example of his own city, Cluj, where Romanians live side by side with Hungarians, Germans, Jews and others, in a culturally varied but 'citizen-united' community. This could set the example for Europe in the future.
The second part of the book describes the national political cultures of seven countries of South-Eastern Europe, namely Serbia, Bosnia Herzegovina, the Republic of Macedonia, Albania, Greece, Bulgaria and Romania. There is also a study of the special role of religion in Albania. These essays are impossible to summarise - they shed very interesting light on the huge diversity of situations and the original nature of traditions in the region.
Overall, this book sheds very useful light on the region of South-East Europe and the two new European Union Member States (more will follow…). In addition to information about the countries in question, the book provides more general considerations on the political dimension of integration and makes a very useful contribution to deeper reflection into the development of the European Union's political culture.
Gabriel Fragnière
*** GERRIT MANSEN, BOGUSLAW BANASZAK (Eds.): Religionsfreiheit in Mittel- und Osteuropa, zwischen Tradition und Europäisierung. Peter Lang (see above). "Regensburger Beiträge zum Staats- und Verwaltungsrecht" series, No. 4. 2006, 218 pp. ISBN 3-631-55276-9.
This collection of mainly legal and constitutional essays arose from a conference held in 2004 at the Human Rights Institute of the Ivan Franko National University in Lviver, Ukraine. The conference aimed to paint as detailed a picture as possible of how religious freedom is being protected in Central and Eastern Europe, studying the situation of some countries in depth and assessing the extent to which European Union enlargement might impact on religious freedom. The special situation of Ukraine naturally aroused huge interest and essays on the Ukraine are published in their original language, with a summary in German. Alongside issues connected with EU legislation under Article 9 of the 1950 Convention of Human Rights, and Article 10 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights of the European Union, the book assesses the protection of religious freedom in Germany, Lithuania, Austria, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, Hungary and Belarus. Alongside protection of individual religious freedom, the book also looks at the protection of minority rights. The utility of this book is its demonstration that moving on from the highly diverse history of the countries in question, we are now moving in the direction of a common, European, approach to the question. One sign of this is the fact that the conference was given financial backing by the Volkswagen Foundation's 'Unity in Diversity? Foundations and conditions for an enlarged Europe' programme.
(GFr)
*** THIERRY MARIANI: Le nouveau voisinage de l'Union européenne et la question de ses frontières. Délégation pour l'Union européenne de l'Assemblée nationale (Boutique de l'Assemblée nationale, 4 rue Aristide Briand, F-75007 Paris. Tel: (33-1) 40636121 - Internet: http://www.assemblee-nationale.fr ). "Rapport d'information" series, No. 3132. 2006, 51 pp, €8-50. ISBN 2-1111-9835-8.
In this newsletter, French parliamentarian Thierry Mariani describes and analyses the guidelines and instruments of the European Neighbourhood Policy. He also looks at the question of the EU's external borders, arguing that the EU cannot actually decide on its final borders until it decides on what it itself is actually there for. In Thierry Mariani's opinion, the European Union is wavering between a Europe of power and a Europe of the markets and it is time for it to decide once and for all between them - unless it decides to reconcile the two.
(MT)
*** NICOLE GNESOTTO, GIOVANNI GREVI (Eds.): The New Global Puzzle. What world for the EU in 2025? Institute for Security Studies (43 av. du Président Wilson, F-75775 Paris cedex 16. Tel: (33-1) 56891930 - Fax: 56891931 - e-mail: info@iss.europa.eu - Internet: http://www.iss.europa.eu ). 2006, 250 pp, €12. ISBN: 92-9198-096-X.
The Institute for Security Studies is an EU agency responsible for providing the EU with research and recommendations for the European security and defence policy. It therefore has responsibility for attempting to discern variables which will impact on how the world changes in the medium-term (twenty years) and where possible, to indicate what changes are like to occur. 'This report does not aim at predicting what the world (and the EU) will look like twenty years from now - an impossible task', writes Nicole Gnesotto, Director of the Institute for Security Studies (ISS) and editor of this book. Her comments illustrate that she and her team are too serious and understand too much about their work to claim to be able to predict the future. To quote Nicole Gnesotto again, "conscious of the many twists that could affect the linear evolution of current trends", the book's authors (mostly ISS researchers) have reviewed, compared and contrasted the essential points of hundreds of documents (classified under themes in the bibliography) from sources as varied as international organisations, universities and charities, covering subjects ranging from the ageing of the population via organised crime in Russia to the use of nanotechnology by the military. The team also called on experts in specific subjects and regional problems to shed light on particular areas of their expertise. The first part of the book looks at the big issues facing the planet, like demography, the economy and energy. The second looks in more detail on big geo-political blocs and countries of current or future strategic importance for the next two decades. Each chapter in the first and second part of the book starts with a small summary of the main issues covered. The third and final part of the book summarises the important points of the two previous parts, setting the European Union against a backdrop of a world where "on the whole, the direction of current trends points towards a deterioration in the living conditions of mankind. The growing complexity of the global environment will make it harder to exercise power and leadership, and to shape a global agenda to address shared challenges". The main people who will be sensitive to the utility of the book are, unsurprisingly, the members of the ISS itself because Nicole Gnesotto argues for this report to become a regular publication, coinciding perhaps with the renewal of the European Commission's term of office every five years. Let us hope her argument is taken up because the book provides useful distance, allowing readers to see the wood from the trees, and provides a condensed overview of current knowledge about future challenges.
(FRo)
*** THIERRY DE MONTBRIAL: Quinze ans qui bouleversèrent le monde. De Berlin à Bagdad. Dunod (Paris. Internet: http://www.dunod.com ). 2006, 482 pp. ISBN 2-10-050103-8.
Regular readers of the European Library will not need reminding of the utility of the Ramses report (Rapport annuel mondial sur le système économique et les strategies) published every year by the 'Institut français des relations internationales'. The founder and director general of Ramses always writes a report assessing changes in the world in recent months and providing readers with reliable tools for 'reasoning about uncertainty', in other words, writing about the future and about strategies. Like rosary beads, this book enables readers to ponder all aspects of the planet from July 1989, the year which saw the start of the fall of the Soviet Empire, until July 2003, the year when the second Gulf War started. Fifteen years of earth-shattering changes which, according to Thierry de Montbrial, contain within them the fault lines that will determine the new world order for several decades to come.
(MT)
*** YVES-HENRI NOUAILHAT, SYLVIE DE LA FOYE: Les Etats-Unis et l'islam. Armand Colin (21 rue du Montparnasse, F-75006 Paris). "L'histoire au présent" series. 2006, 217 pp. ISBN 2-200-26418-6.
This book by two French historians, an expert on the history of international relations and North America and an expert on the Middle East, will help readers understand recent events that have shaken Afghanistan, Iraq and the Middle East in general, by looking beyond the froth on the surface to plumb the source of the conflicts. The book explains the relationship over time between the United States and the Muslim World, since the start of the twentieth century. In lively style, they study the United States' attitude with regard to Islamic fundamentalism, from the war on Al Qaeda to the war on Iraq, shedding light on the balance of power and disfunctioning in the US administration before and after 11 September 2001. They also look at where Bin Laden and his followers originated from. Through a case study of Israel and the still decisive issue of oil supplies, the authors go on to examine constants and changes in US policy from 1945 to 2001 for the Arab and Muslim world, a policy long fashioned in the image of the Cold War. The last chapter looks at home-grown Islam in the United States, which is another interesting chapter in a book which reads like a novel.
(PBo)
*** EHSAN MASOOD: British Muslims. Media Guide. British Council (London). 2006, 72 pp, £5. ISBN 0-86355-569-1.
Writer and journalist Ehsan Masood was commissioned to write this book by the British Council and the Association of Muslim Social Scientists. The aim of the beautifully illustrated book, published in wonderful sepia colours, is to describe Muslim communities in the United Kingdom, along with their history, current situation and future and allow readers in the UK and elsewhere to gain better understanding of the diversity of British society. In the introduction, the President of the British Council, Lord Kinnock, explains that the book was commissioned in the aftermath of the controversy surrounding Danish caricatures of the Prophet. The publication includes a very useful glossary, list of British associations and institutions which have links with Islam, and links to websites.
(PBo)