Abstract: The last decade of the 20th century was marked by a process that continues today, consisting in the diffusion of the discourse about security in all the spheres of everyday life. The theoretical impetus of this phenomenon (also called “securitization”) was given by the Copenhagen school, but it slowly penetrated the political discourse, and even the policies of States. We will try to understand what this emphasis on the security problematique means and how it can be interpreted, or read. The method we will use is Derrida’s “double reading”, where in the first reading, we will present the issue of security as it is tackled nowadays in the international scholarship and policy-making environment, while in the second reading we will try to deconstruct the evolution of the discourse about security. This will help us understand the consequences of the evolution of the concept of “security” for the relation between the international community and the State, on the one hand, and between the State and its citizens, on the other hand. After examining the meaning of the constructed dichotomy between liberty and security, we will argue that the inflation of the security discourse has resulted into a quasi permanent state of exception (Carl Schmitt) invoked by the State in order to consolidate its sovereignty, which is more and more threatened by the globalization processes. Thus, the security discourse is an instrument of the political power which is re-producing its society, threatened by the porousness of borders, migration, and evolving international interventionism.
The latest issue of the Romanian Journal of Political Science (PolSci) covers traditional topics from international diplomacy and security, to understanding the communism inheritance in Central and East European countries and international relations between these and the European... »
Since the demise of communism in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) in 1989, transitional justice has been invoked as the most appropriate means to deal with the past injustices while strengthening the newly - adopted democratic procedures. Predominantly chosen over criminal procedures or truth commissions, lustration was initially understood as a temporary process of screening public officials for links with the Communist Secret Services, meant essentially to reconcile the need for trust-based institutions and to protect the development of liberal democracy. Nevertheless, with democratic procedures formally in place, under pursuit,... »
Introduction
The European Union (EU) is one of the largest economic powers in the world but has often been reluctant to engage in international affairs on a level commensurate with its potential might. Although attempts at forging a common European foreign policy reach back to the 1970s with the creation of European Political Cooperation (EPC), member states have been reluctant to sacrifice what is seen as one of the most crucial aspects of sovereignty – the right to independent international conduct – for the sake of greater European cohesion. ... »
Environmental security. Food security. Military security. Markets security. Social security. Human security. It seems that all the aspects of everyday life are covered by some form of security. Barry Buzan deplored, in the first edition of his very famous book, People, States, and Fear: An Agenda for International Security Studies in the Post Cold War Era, the fact that the concept of 'security' was insufficiently developed in international relations and political science and that it was only used in its military dimension (Buzan 1983). The situation is completely different nowadays... »
By focusing on the hybrid regimes that existed in the 1990s in Croatia, Serbia, and Montenegro, this paper puts forward a potential explanation of such political dynamics. It argues that the structure of power in these regimes was the key factor determining whether an incumbent party would stay in power or not. It thereby makes a distinction between regimes whose power is ‘personalized’, i.e. structured around a charismatic leader (as were the former two), and those in which it is ‘institutionalized‘, that is derived from a party organization (as was... »
Introduction
According to the theory of small states in international relations, small states do not have as many means to achieve their foreign policy goals as larger states have (Morgenthau, 1948/2004: 97; Keohane, 1969; Benwell, 2011). However, there are certain niches that can be filled up by small states, since they have certain comparative advantages to larger states (see for example Vital, 1967; Keohane, 1969; Ingebritsen, 2006; Cooper and Shaw, 2009; Steinmetz and Wivel, 2010). Due to certain rules and procedures in modern international relations, an important foreign policy task can... »
I. Russia and the European Union – parallel evolutions in the last two decades
The fall of USSR has been accompanied and followed by a series of processes: from independence movements and declarations to breakaway attempts – some of them successful – inside the newly independent states. The end of 1991 – twenty years ago – brought with it the disintegration of the large soviet empire. The end of the 1980s and the beginning of the 1990s was a period of change, which brought liberalisation and eventually democratization in Eastern Europe... »
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International Advisory Board
Alina Mungiu-Pippidi (chair) Hertie School of Governance
Larry Diamond Stanford University
Tom Gallagher University of Bradford
Alena Ledeneva University College London
Michael McFaul Stanford University
Dennis Deletant Georgetown University
Helen Wallace London School of Economics and Political Science
