This article deals with the visit of the Belgian Queen Elisabeth to Poland in 1955. The monarch was to be the honorary guest of the Fifth International Chopin Competition. The queen used the opportunity to carry out a diplomatic mission, attempting to resolve issues that negotiations between Brussels and Warsaw failed to disentangle. This article analyses the mission and its political consequences for mutual relations between the two countries.
Many scholars have devoted a great deal of attention to the problems of West-centrism and American parochialism in the scholarly discipline of International Relations (IR). Few scholars today would dispute the importance of the Global IR project in this regard. Although this intellectual exercise comprises a variety of approaches, the common unifying concern is to promote "greater diversity" in IR knowledge and knowledge production by embracing a wide range of histories, experiences and perspectives, particularly from outside the West. A key question remains: to what extent do we practise what we preach? Accordingly, this special issue takes a self-reflexive stock of contemporary IR research and teaching trends in Southeast Asia. More specifically, it brings together critical scholars living in six Southeast Asian countries—Vietnam, Indonesia, Thailand, Singapore, the Philippines and Cambodia—who have conducted nationwide surveys of their own IR communities and identified how IR is researched and taught in their own countries. Based on the findings of this novel survey, the contributors discuss opportunities and challenges in continuing to encourage greater diversity in the knowledge production of the IR communities of which they are also members. In this way, this special issue presents not only social contexts and institutional constraints, but also autobiographical encounters, both positive (achievements) and negative (frustrations), that the contributors have had in their own IR communities. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)
This report is concerned with the contribution of political science to the instructional needs of those who are preparing to teach, and of those now teaching, the social studies in elementary and secondary schools. How can political scientists in colleges and universities maximize the contribution which they, as specialists in one large field of human knowledge, can make to enrich the teaching of the social studies? Before offering suggestions which, if applied generally, should provide at least a partial answer to the question, the Committee on the Social Studies states two assumptions. First, most political scientists can do more than they have done in the past. Second, reverse lend-lease is anticipated. Political scientists have much to learn from teachers of the social studies as to what methods are effective in enabling youth to learn the ways of democracy and what types of material are most useful in the learning process. The recommendations in this report are presented in the hope that coöperation between the two groups will become more extensive and regular. The recommendations are divided into four classes, according to the incidence of responsibility for carrying them into effect.
Studies of "policy" and l'policymakingll have proliferated recently. One reason is the serious policymaking difficulties of American and other Western governments. Earlier political science did not address these problems well because of its concentration on political input processes rather than outputs. Most policy studies either evaluate programs 0′ explain cases of policymaking, The approach proposed here, called public policy, does both. Analyses of preferred options are played off against the limitations of process, and vice versa. This conception is illustrated and the problems posed by it are discussed.