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Romanian Journal of Political Science
Romanian Journal of Political Science (PolSci),
the only Romanian Social science journal indexed
by IPSA, calls for reviews to books published in
East European national languages which can be of
larger interest for scholars on Eastern Europe.
The ideal dimenssion of a review is of 2000
words, but review articles can be longer. The
purpose of this call for papers is to exchange
information in English on social science work
carried in national languages in the broader
region. PolSci is accessible online at
www.sar.org.ro.
Authors receive as honorarium a couple of
hard-copy issues with their review. Email to
office@sar.org.ro
Andreea ANDREESCU,
Lucian NASTASĂ & Andrea VARGA (eds.) Minorităţi
etnoculturale. Mărturii documentare. Maghiarii
din România (1945-1955) [Ethnocultural
minorities. Documentary testimonies. Hungarians
from Romania (1945 1955)], Cluj: CRDE, 2002,
920 p.
http://www.edrc.ro/ro/r5index1.html
The Male Face of Trade Unions in Central and Eastern Europe, by Jasna A. Petrovic, published by ICFTU CEE, in April 2002. Jasna Petrovic is the Coordinator of the Women's Network for Central and Eastern Europe. Send your request (with your postal address) to: jasna.petrovic1@sssh.hr
COMPASS: A new manual on human rights education
with young people
Compass is the title of the manual on human
rights education with young people just produced
by the Directorate of Youth and Sport of the
Council of Europe. Compass is addressed to all
those who are curious and motivated to undertake
human rights education but have had no
opportunities for training or are short of
methods to do it.
Compass is organised in five chapters:
- Chapter 1: familiarises the reader with what
we mean by human rights education and how to use
Compass.
- Chapter 2: is a collection of more than 49
activities of different levels of complexity,
organised according to 15 global themes and
address different types of rights.
- Chapter 3: is entitled “Taking action” and
contains ideas and tips for those that would
like to be more active in promoting human
rights.
- Chapter 4: contains what the user needs to
know about human rights and international
standards and documents.
- Chapter 5: supplies supplementary background
information about the 15 themes.
The appendices contain essential information and
legal documents, because human rights are also
about laws.
More information:
http://book.coe.int
eycb.secretariat@coe.int
publishing@coe.int
Local Government
Assistance Program in Romania has launched a new
Training Manual "Citizen Participation in
Decision Making"
The purpose of this Training Manual is to
provide techniques, examples and case studies on
citizen participation training. Therefore this
manual can be a useful working instrument for
various organizations (Training Institutes,
Local Government Associations, NGOs, etc.) or
instructors who wish to initiate and develop
training courses on this topic. This new
Research Triangle Institute /LGAP USAID funded
publication incorporates three years of
experience in conducting Citizen Participation
programs in Romania, enriching the self study
guide published in 2001 with multiple exercises,
case studies, and reflection moments collected
by the authors mostly from Romania, but also for
the USA, Canada, Ukraine and Portugal.The manual
is posted online.
More information:
www.lga.ro
Daniel Serban, Citizen Participation Program
Manager, e-mail:
dserban@xnet.ro
Disrupting and Reshaping. Early Stages of Nation
Building in the Balkans
edited by Marco Dogo and Guido Franzinetti
The papers collected in this book discuss and
compare four cases of transition from the
Ottoman imperial regime to the nation-state
polity and legitimacy (Serbia, Greece, Bulgaria,
and Turkey) in the Balkans between XIX and XX
century.
The authors are European historians of different
school, age and provenance (from West to East:
Edinburgh, Turin, Trieste, Belgrade, Sofia,
Athens, Ankara). Among the topics they approach
in these pages, the reader will find: wars and
"disorder", as a prologue to disruption of
Ottoman authority and eventual secession;
traditional political culture and new political
élites; agrarian conditions, modernising
policies and peasant separateness; legitimising
ideologies and conflicting political loyalties
in the new nation-states. Political upheaval and
subsequent state-centred activities and trends
(constitutionalism, history writing, enlarged
enfranchisement.), rather than ethno-cultural
heritages, are here proposed as relevant factors
in the shaping of national identities.
Publishing House: Longo Editore Ravenna.
Books and Occasional Papers can be ordered
directly from the Web page of the Network:
www.eurobalk.net
The Services Sectors in Central and
Eastern Europe
by Hermine Vidovic
WIIW Research Reports, No. 289, September 2002
(Reprint, first published by Bank Austria
Creditanstalt, Vienna, July 2002;
only available as hard copy)
88 pages including 17 Tables, 7 Figures and 5
Maps
EUR 22.00
For Abstract see
http://www.wiiw.ac.at/
THE STATE OF LOCAL DEMOCRACY IN CENTRAL EUROPE
The State of Local Democracy in Central
Europe, the new publication of the Indicators of
Local Democratic Governance Project, funded by
the Local Government and Public Service Reform
Initiative (LGI) and managed by the Tocqueville
Research Center (T-RC), is now available. The
460-page publication contains four country
reports on local government in Hungary, Latvia,
Poland, and Romania, plus a comparative chapter
which assimilates the data collected from the
four countries. Free copies can be ordered from
LGI by contacting
vzentai@osi.hu
or the publication may be viewed electronically
at
http://lgi.osi.hu/publications/default.asp?id=100.
For more information on the activities of either
T-RC or LGI see our websites:
www.t-rc.org
and
www.osi.hu/lgi
WIIW
HANDBOOK OF STATISTICS: COUNTRIES IN TRANSITION 2002
545 pages, in English (including 400 Tables and Graphs)
WIIW, Vienna, October 2002, ISBN 3-85209-007-5
Contains annual and monthly statistics, covering key economic data on twelve
transition countries (Bulgaria, Croatia, Czech Republic, Hungary, Macedonia,
Poland, Romania, Russia, Slovakia, Slovenia, Ukraine and Yugoslavia) for the
period 1990 to August 2002.
Availability:
- Hard copy (published mid-October)
price: EUR 90
- PDF format on CD-ROM (end of September)
price: EUR 90
- MS Excel tables + PDF format on CD-ROM, plus hard copy (mid-October)
price: EUR 225
- MS Excel tables of individual chapters, on diskette (end of September)
price: EUR 36 per chapter
See also
http://www.wiiw.ac.at/handbook.html
To order, please contact Ms. Ursula Köhrl, WIIW,
Oppolzergasse 6, A-1010 Vienna, Austria,
phone (+43-1) 533 66 10 11, fax (+43-1) 533 66 10 50, e-mail:
koehrl@wsr.ac.at
Hartwig, Die Europapolitik
Rumaeniens
Reviewed by Anna Koebberling
Ines Hartwig, Die Europapolitik Rumäniens. Entwicklung institutionalisierter
Kooperation [Romania's EU- policy. Development of institutionalized
cooperation], Baden-Baden: Nomos 2001 (Integration Europas und Ordnung der
Weltwirtschaft, Bd. 22). 283 pp, 50 EURO, ISBN 3-7890-7086-6 (hardcover).
Reviewed by Anna Köbberling (Chamber of Skilled Crafts, Koblenz), Email:
A.koebberling@gmx.de
This book is based on the doctoral dissertation of Ines Hartwig, which was
completed in 2000 with Prof. Dr. Rudolf Hrbek at the department of social
sciences at theuniversity of Tübingen. It was published as volume 22 of the
series "Integration of Europe and system of world's economy", edited by Rudolf
Hrbek, Thomas Opperman and Joachim Starbatty.
The author analyzes the process of reorientation of Romanian EU policy after the
revolution of 1989. Thereby she focuses on two multilateral forms of
cooperation: On the one hand the process of cooperation between Romania and the
EU, on the other hand the cooperation of the Black Sea states. While the
cooperation with the EU could suggest that Romania's foreign policy is becoming
more western-orientated, the Black-Sea-cooperation might be interpreted as a
turn to the East. The comparative analysis of these two processes with their
political actors and strategies shall help to define Romania's position with
regard to foreign affairs.
Initially the chronological framework had been chosen for the period from 1989
until the elections of 1996, which brought the political turn from the socialist
to a conservative government. For the publication, the author added a chapter
about the preferences and strategies of the new government that was elected in
2000. Like most political observers, the author could not know that the new
cabinet under Ion Iliescu, now self-titled as "social-democratic", would pursue
a much more liberal and pro-western foreign policy in its second turn in office.
Accordingly, the author's evaluation in the conclusion turned out perhaps a
little too pessimistic. However, the reader learns a lot about Romanian
policyalso the internal politicsof the last ten years. Therefore reading is
quite pleasant because the book combines a good and enjoyable style with a clear
structure. Clearly, the book has been well editedwhich is not always certain
nowadays.
The author analyzes a very broad basis of sources for her dissertation and
evaluates the relevant EU-documents almost completely (i.e. international
agreements, documents of the Council, Commission and the European Parliament as
well as documents of the Black Sea Economic Cooperation Council, documents
pertaining to Romanian domestic affairs, speeches, parliamentary protocols,
party programs etc.). Furthermore, she used a broad palette of secondary
literature, newspaper articles and press statements, complemented by 23 personal
interviews with important Romanian politicians, such as members of parliament,
chief officers and ambassadors. The examination of all this material is a great
achievement. Nevertheless, the reader is not inundated by the abundance of
material, but receives a clearly structured overview. At the end of every
chapter, one finds a substantiated and well-balanced evaluation. The helpful
annex, consisting of an index, a list of abbreviations and an explanation of
important Romanian words make the book rounded off in all respects. It will be
an important reading for all involved with Romanian politics and may become a
classic in this field.
Tom Gallagher, Outcast Europe: The Balkans, 1789-1989, From the Ottomans
to Milosevic. London: Routledge, 2001. 314 pp. + index. ISBN
0-415-27089-8, 55 GBP (hardcover).
Reviewed by Isa Blumi (New York University), Email:
ngapeja@rocketmail.com
http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0415270898/balkanacademicne
Among the plethora of books that have emerged since the early 1990s that focus
on explaining the events in the Balkans, with a few noticeable exceptions,
little has been done to attempt to look at the origins of conflict and
institutional collapse taking a long durée perspective. Synthesizing a
region-wide analysis of processes over the last one hundred or so years is even
less popular among the journalists and professors who have adopted the Balkans
as their area of expertise. Tom Gallagher's latest work reflects a welcome
premonition that much of what we think we are witnessing taking place in the
Balkans today is a product, in part at least, of the relational dynamics
individual countries have with primarily European powers. The book's premise,
that outside powers have been a constant source of intrigue and destructive
brinkmanship inside the Balkans is welcome and on the whole, well expressed
throughout the book. The point is frequently reinforced with Gallagher's lucid
and simple narrative making this book an excellent resource for undergraduate
students. On the other hand, as a serious think piece into the origins of THE
Balkan Crisis, if such a thing can even be conceived, the book I fear is far too
general in nature to be sufficient.
One begins to immediately notice the scale of this project and its intended
audience when starting to read the first pages. While addressing a layman
audience does have its merits, one gets the sense a stronger effort is still
needed to make such synthesizing arguments to the so-called professional
audience to justify our attention. I fear with the author's (and perhaps the
commissioning editors') limited ambitions, much goes wanting in terms of
fleshing out an otherwise solid thesis. It is clear that Gallagher has not done
a great deal of work on moving beyond what most in the field already know. The
unashamed use of secondary literature to substantiate a much-considered thesis
about outsider shenanigans in the Balkans cannot be too enthusiastically
applauded at this medium of analysis. Gallagher's only clear sense of expertise
is demonstrated in the material relating to Romania, which makes sense as he has
written on the area in the past. That Gallagher did not really move beyond the
widely read secondary literature smacks of an opportunistic attempt to fill in a
perceived hole in the literature. If scholars are thought to be one of the
possible audiences for the book, I think the lack of research reflects a very
disingenuous effort to push the thesis further along its already well traveled
path.
That an almost exclusive use of secondary English-language material has provided
the foundations to this book strikes me as an indication of a frustratingly lack
of ambition. This could be seen as a minimalist approach to addressing a
potentially profitable angle of interpretation. Surely, being based in the UK,
(the obsessive focus on British activities/failures/treacheries in the region is
refreshing to say the least) Gallagher could have ventured into the Public
Record's Office and mine a few files. The utter lack of primary research, let
alone the failure to cite literature other than that written in English reveals
a book project and an intellectual project hastily conjoined to fit a market
niche. I must repeat, if that was indeed the case and the expected audience was
the "general public" then I can recommend this book for it is well written and
argued at that level.
For the specialist however, again there are problems. Upon Gallagher's often
outdated bibliographic lifeboat, floats some troubling over simplifications and
outright distortions that have proven to be of dire importance in the societies
from which they originated. The most glaring example and the one I wish to
focus here is the simply wrong placement of responsibility asserted by
Christiphor Hitchens (who reads neither Greek nor Turkish) on Turkish Prime
Minister Menderes in the 1955 riots that would be the basis for the Military
coup and extensive expulsion of Greek and Armenian minorities in Istanbul.
Recent scholarship in Turkey has bravely challenged this line of history and has
resulted in a healthy revision of the period, in the process raising new debates
about the entire post war period and the role of the Turkish military. What
Gallagher does is provide an outdated justification for judicial murder and
virulently undemocratic one at that. Such scholarship simply no longer holds
water in light of literature published since the early 1990s. Surely, the debate
deserves our full attention. That it is unacknowledged in this book reveals the
central methodological weakness of the study, that it relies on often outdated
secondary material.
Some of Gallagher's stronger sections is his detailed treatment of British
activities in the region, in particular those of Winston Churchill's vacillation
and uncertainty in facing the rising menace of Soviet hegemony in Eastern
Europe. Gallagher's irreverence towards the British icon is refreshing and worth
the price of the book as his criticism is clear, ironic and at times comically
presented. The wonderfully exposed failures of both British and US dealings with
Stalin during the last period of the war is much appreciated, especially in the
context of the hero worship so many have bestowed upon both Roosevelt and
Churchill and their assumed principles. Gallagher also does well in this
section (pp. 127-184) to remind the reader of the parallels with events and
vacillations of British and American leaders in the 1990s. The three chapters on
the post World War, however, reads a bit confused in total as Gallagher shifts
between countries in an unreasonably confounding manner. In the end, this
section must be characterized as a missed opportunity.
Gallagher proves equally apt to cast a critical gaze at the role post Cold War
leaders in the West dragged their feet in the face of blatant aggression in the
region. Some of Gallagher's finer moments in this book are in these last pages
as he explores the failures of international bodies to halt the wars of the
1990s. He is clearly capable of making the point that thankfully explores the
deeper nuances of the fragmentation of internal structures of Romania and
Yugoslavia and the repeated manipulation by many outside powers of those
ambiguous moments. That Western inaction for years instigated years of suffering
is plainly identified here and deserves a better vehicle than this book for a
larger reading public. If Gallagher wished to extend his critique to that higher
level of analysis that included primary research, this last part of his book
would warrant extensive consideration by scholars, who again, instinctually
already know all this but have rarely read it spelled out for them so clearly.
Lastly, as a practicing Ottomanists, it is simply distressing that someone who
rightly dedicates at least a chapter to the 500 year period of Balkan history
cannot bother to read one source that used Ottoman language primary sources.
Surely Gallagher can take the time to read beyond Charles and Barbara Jelavich,
C.M. Woodhouse, Denis Hupchick, and the overrated Stavrianos to help him tell
the story of the late Ottoman period. I would recommend, for instance, Sukru
Hanioglu's remarkable works, Selim Deringil, Hasan Kayali, or, in the least
Halil Inalcik, all of whom write on the region during the period. This last
criticism speaks of a larger issue that still plagues the study of the Balkans
as once again, with intentions in the right place, another book has been written
which has done little to actually consult the Ottoman legacy through the eyes of
the Ottomans themselves. Not consulting Serbian or Greek materials to write a
history of the modern Serb and Greek state would be widely criticized. Why
similar standards are not applied to the Ottoman period is still a problem that
practitioners in the field have not resolved.
