Suchergebnisse

Security problems of francophone Africa, by John Chipman
Recently there have been a number of military uprisings in francophone Africa. The western and central parts of Africa are now much more unstable parts of the continent than they were ten years ago. The security concerns of the francophone states vary from country to country and include problems caused by ethnic divisions, border disputes, religious and seperatist disputes subversive immigration, and disaffection caused by austere economic problems or natural catastrophes. No mere alliance of regional powers is likely to prevent the resurgence of vosilence or crises in these states. But security systems established within economic organisations may offer some promise in terms of reinforcing mutual confidence among member states and in providing structures for conflict resolution. The French can continue to play a stabilising role in the region by encouraging the development of such organisations. The source of instability in these states, however, is likely to remain internal.

France in the « post-Pershing » period, by Pierre Lellouche
Even though the Soviets lost the test of wills, the Euromissile issue is by no me ans over now that the first deployment has taken place. Not having made any real concessions in time, the Kremlin's bluff failed. Although the North Atlantic alliance certainly gained an important psychological success, the European democracies must endure another four years internal conflict over this issue. The two big questions which will arise over future Geneva negotiations are : which of the superpowers will give way first ? and : how will political feeling evolve in Western Europe if nothing happens in Geneva before 1985 ? France may be force during this « post-Pershing » period to make fundamental redefinition of its defence and national security policies. This could engender rupture of the « consensus » of opinion in France which has up till now been apparent in matters of defence. The problem of European security in the coming years can only lead once more to the idea of cooperative inter-European defence system. Only France could take far-reaching initiative in this respect and all depends on whether the French who have legitimate worries about the consequences of German feelings of insecurity have the energy to overcome their own inertia as well as that of their fellow Europeans.

Dominic Lieven, The Russian ruling elite under Nicholas II. Career patterns.
The article studies the route taken to high governmental office by members of the Russian ruling elite under Nicholas II. Specifically, it looks at the career patterns of the 215 men appointed to the State Council in the first twenty years of Nicholas II's reign. The article is based on the service records of these 215 men in the Central State Historical Archive in Leningrad. It shows that by 1894-1914 those holding top governmental positions were almost always career civil servants. The only major exception to this was the Ministry of Internal Affairs, where senior posts were sometimes filled by members of the landowning gentry who had formerly served as marshals of the nobility, or by generals. Officials of the domestic departments very seldom transferred into the "organs of national security" (Ministry of Foreign Affairs, War and Marine). The domestic government and senior civil service was dominated in particular by jurists (i.e. by men with a legal education who had served in the judicial department), who very often held the top posts not only in the Ministries of Justice and Internal Affairs, but also in the State Chancellery and Chancellery of the Committee/Council of Ministers. The departments of education, control, agriculture and state properties, communications, Synod, and Emperor's Own Personal Chancellery were of very little importance as breeding grounds for the bureaucratic elite. The article shows that each department had its own typical career patterns and that these differed greatly from ministry to ministry. It also contrasts the careers of "generalists" and "specialists", and illustrates how differing social origins and educations can be closely linked to different types and patterns of careers.

The outcome of World War II brought a new political order to the nations of Eastern Europe : an order which, due to its ideological bases and emphasis on transformation of man and society, may be called "Utopian". A primary expression of this Utopia was the Soviet-style command economy, transported from the land of its invention and grafted onto the new socialist states.
This essay, which deals with the broad social consequences of economic reform in East Europe, views reform as a process of dismantling the command economy — a process called forth by the recognition that the promised Utopia is false, and that the economic arrangements linked with its attainment fail to meet the contemporary economic needs of the socialist states. Just as the social consequences of the command economy have shaped, to a significant degree, everyday life in East Europe, so do the consequences of reform promise to change that life. The main focus of the essay is on the Hungarian reform — the New Economic Mechanism — in effect since 1968, as a "case" with potential relevance for other socialist states whose reforms have not yet gone so far.
The command economy, in Hungary as elsewhere, was marked by low living standards, a certain amount of egalitarianism in economic rewards combined with job security, an underprovisioning of the service and consumer goods sectors, and chronic problems of housing shortage. Perhaps most critically of all its impacts, the logic of reform challenges the egalitarianism (though at low average pay levels) and job security (rooted in a tolerance for disguised underemployment and low labor productivity) which have provided much of whatever working-class support exists for the East European regimes. The threat of increased income differentials, of "efficiency" criteria, confronts a "populist" form of egalitarianism widespread among the working class, to whom equality of opportunity seems not so important as equality of result. These, and other consequences of allowing freer play to quasi-market mechanism (such as increased peasant incomes via higher produce prices, differentiation in housing as it moves toward becoming a "market" rather than a "welfare" item, etc.) imply changes in the hither to relatively stable positions of social strata.
Such changes are matters of controversy, and reform has both its defenders (reform economists themselves, the professional intelligentsia and certain other groups who perceive benefits forthcoming) and its opponents. The latter is an especially mixed group, encompassing numerous political functionaries and enter- prise managers who see their positions threatened by the introduction of new demands, and new and unfamiliar performance criteria, as well as rank-and-file workers who see reform as a threat to their relative material and symbolic status, and, perhaps, "New Left" intelligentsia as well, opposed to a pragmatism which seems to aim at a socialist "consumer society".
The consequences of reform, in Hungary at least, are real : whether they are, as yet, irreversible is another question. The fate of economic reform, already far advanced in Hungary, less so in the other Warsaw Pact states, depends not only on the internal balance of political forces as it affects the consensus on reform's social consequences, but also on the position of the USSR. The Soviet attitude has thus far been benign, but indications of official discontent with some consequences of the NEM, at the March 1974 HSWP plenum, may indicate not only domestic, but also Soviet, concerns with the potential results of replacing Utopia with pragmatism.