A Mulsim Diaspora in the West

       The ongoing discussions about the impact of the immigration waves from Muslim countries to the Western world have brought up a new conceptualization of the co-habitation models in the Western societies. In the late 2000s, Nederveen Pieters proposed three cultural paradigms, or scenarios: cultural convergence, cultural hybridization and cultural differentialism. In other words, he posed a question whether globalization will lead to an evening-out of cultural differences and their complete disappearance from the political and social sphere, or whether cultural differences will form the foundation of intense social cleavages and schisms, or whether they will eventually mix up to form a new hybrid cultural identification. In Western Europe, the main models of integration are the French assimilation model (cultural convergence paradigm) and the British multiculturalism (hybridization). But, in recent years, many West European countries have adopted a more aggressive strategy of restrictions and limitations – a purely differentialistic approach. Such a turn has provoked a heated discussion on whether the intellectual and religious establishment of the Muslim immigrant community is able to propose a revised, adapted to new conditions set of behavioral models of co-habitation with non-muslim majorities in the European states. However, the majority of the academic community both in the West and in the East agree that the future belongs to cultural hybridization, not differentialism or homogenization, for it is a natural way of alleviating conflicts between different cultures. (To be continued...)

Legal Regulation in Global Politics

       The evolution of the system of international relations have always been accompanied by changes in the area of international law, which serves the purpose of maintaining the existing world order and global security, averting wars and adjusting mechanisms of global economic cooperation. Nowadays, every single state is part of the international legal system. International law is not a mere fixed code of norms, prescribed in a constitution, but a juridical state of international relations in their dynamics. In the XXI century, when international law covers intergovernmental relations in dozens of spheres, including trade, ecology, sea and ocean zones demarcation and the right of possession, military and scientific cooperation, international law makers are bound to resort to various forms and means of legal collaboration. Negotiations and consultations through which the participants to a dispute compare facts and legal positions so as to find a resolution to a disputable issue between themselves, are referred to as diplomatic means; while arbitration tribunals and international courts serve as legal means of international law. In the XX–XXI centuries diplomatic settlements, international organizations’ resolutions and conventions have been forming a wide global law environment, which entangles all the parties to international relations system in a structured field of legal collaboration.

World Wars and the Emergence of World Politics

       Although some experts make no difference in using terms “global politics” and “international politics”, the two concepts have a number of steep differences. These distinctions come into light in the analysis of the impact of the two world wars on the global political and social system. As early as in the pre-World War One years, various researchers were conscious of the fact that the “international politics” concept was too scanty, as it was only interpreting world affairs through the state-to-state prism, while ethnic, social and economic newcomers to the world political arena were already coming to take their place. Another “global”, rather than “international”, feature of the First World War was the influence of ideologies and non-traditional transnational actors on the political and economic situation within traditional nation-states, with the Russian Bolshevik revolution being the most revealing and demonstrative example. The Second World war was even less conventional and “international”, than the First, for that was a massive confrontation of revisionist, messianic and universalistic forces, on one hand, and a clash of three rival ideological systems over the global ethno-political and social realm on the other. The XX century marks the significant change in the composition of the world system, when new actors and ideological movements, born out of the two world wars had seized their place within the structure of world politics, transcending the “international” politics to a new “global” level.

A Metageographic Axis of Eurasia

       The geographic image of Eurasia should be compared to other geographic images on meta-level, in the metageographic space. The metageography of Eurasia deals with physical, cultural, political and socio-economic charachteristics of the Eurasian geography. Metageography is an interdisciplinary area of knowledge, located at the interface of science, philosophy and art and dealing with different possibilities, conditions, means and discourses of geographic ideation and imagination. There are several possible alternative references to metageography, like the philosophy of landscape, the philosophy of place and locality, existential geography, geosophia, and even geography of imagination or geopoetry. From this point of view, the past, the present and the future of the continent can be viewed as evolution of two axis – Hindueuropean (encompassing British Isles, The Netherlands, the Mediterranean, the Middle East region and Hindustan), which took its definitive shape in the first quarter of the XX century, and Sino-russian (comprising the East European plain, the Russian North, Central Asia and China), an axis still in the process of formation. The south eastern poles of the axis carry far more ancient integral civilizational images (China and India), while the north western poles are the bearers of civilizational dynamics and progress, pro tanto, the axis balance against each other. Consequently, the entire historical complex of political, economic and social interactions within the Eurasian macroregion can be seen from the metageographic position as a continuous interaxial confrontation.

Asymmetric Conflicts in Contemporary American Political Thought

Qualitative Change in the Nuclear Domain

Supranationality and Political Networks in Present-Day’s EU

Postbipolar World Order in Retrospect

China’s Technological Capacity in American Scholarship

PERSONA GRATA

Faces and Personalities

“There is a need to establish a new research institution in the Russian Far East that could bring together IR students and practitioners in the area of world affairs and security…”

WORLD BUSNESS AND POLITICAL AUTHORITY

National Patterns of Lobbyism in the USA and Japan

FORUM STRENGTHENS THE ACADEMIC COMMUNITY

Our Network

AEFIR Winter School, 2010

Kyrgyzstan Between Great Powers

Political Drama in Bishkek

Will the Economic Crisis Give Way to a Political Turbulence?

SIC ITUR AD ASTRA

A Mind So Mightful and Unyielding. 70th Jubilee of Viktor Kremenyuk

SCRIPTA MANENT

Reviews

Corruption as a Global Threat
Corruption, Global Security, and World Order/ Robert I. Rotberg (ed.), Washington: Brookings Institution Press, 2009. 497 p.

Inexhaustible Drive of American Messianism
McFaul M. Advancing Democracy Abroad. Why We Should and How We Can. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2010.

Today’s China: Great-Powerness and National Identity
Rex Li. A Rising China and Security in East Asia: Identity construction and security discourse. London: Routledge, 2009. 297 p.

America’s Electoral Suspense
Heilemann John, Halperin Mark. Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime. New York: Harper, 2010. 448 p.

Russia and the European Union
Stosunki Rosji z Unia Europejska / Pod red. S. Belenia i K. Chudoleja. Warszawa: Wydawnictwa Uniwersytetu Warszawskiego, 2009. 314 s.

Altai IR Scholars’ Diary
Современная Россия и мир. Роль политических лидеров в формировании имиджа страны и региона. Дневник Алтайской школы политических исследований. № 25. Барнаул: Издательство Алтайского государственного университета, 2009. 248 с.

In brevi

A POTENTIA AD ACTUM

New doctorships

IN MEMORIAM

Mark A. Khrustalev (1930-2010)

Our authors

Contents and Summaries