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This paper examines the influence that land use conflicts have on adherences to environmental ideas and values. By referring to a case study and emerging from the obligation to argue about what stakeholders encounter, the author analyses different processes. These processes lead to disseminate environmental values and ideas as they reinforce the commitment to pro-environmental attitudes. The epistemic dimension of debates can nevertheless exert a counter-effect on these processes.

Résumé:  L'article s'interroge sur l'absence, en Suisse, d'un mouvement national interne qui s'opposerait au récit national fédéral. L'auto‐désignation comme nation, au sein de pays plurilingues comme le Canada, est l'indice de tensions linguistiques fortes, mais en Suisse, seul le concept de « communauté linguistique » se réfère à l'échelon ethnolinguistique. Même si les émotions identitaires et le rapport au territoire dans le canton de Fribourg rappellent la situation québécoise, les conflits linguistiques sont réglés exclusivement au niveau cantonal. Pour qu'émerge un discours national « infra‐suisse », il faudrait que l'appartenance romande ou alémanique soit considérée comme particulièrement centrale. Or, notre enquête auprès de 962 conseillers communaux de cantons bilingues montre que l'affiliation linguistique est importante et modèle les comportements politiques, mais qu'elle ne concurrence pas l'identification cantonale (particulièrement forte en Valais) ou l'identification suisse. Pour des raisons qui tiennent à l'histoire et à la géographie linguistique, la Suisse demeure une nation unitaire.

In a number of incidents, particularly in Rwanda (1990- 1994) & in Cote d'Ivoire (2004), the behavior of certain French soldiers as regards their respect for military ethics & war ethics has been questioned. Can the hypothesis that democracies are increasingly taking liberties with the ethical standards in post-Cold War conflicts, liberties that are illustrated by the attitude of the US forces in Iraq, be applied to the French army? On the contrary. There has been a reinforcement of external & especially internal control of soldiers' behavior in these conflicts. This is reflected particularly in a special concern for the issues of civilian losses, the controlled use of force as well as the implementation of a voluntaristic policy by the Army high command as regards the ethics of the military career since the French Army has become a professional one. The various forms of human rights violations committed in operations conducted since the end of the Cold War are analyzed here to assess the change in behavior of the Army as regards ethics. Adapted from the source document.

Because of the manner in which they look at interorganizational conflict & power, no mainstream organizational theories have been able to incorporate the three elements that compose the political dimension in an organization: strategic interaction, integration of behavior in the collective system, & cultural effects. Michel Crozier, collaborating with Erhard Friedberg (L'Acteur et le systeme [The Actor and the System], Paris: Seuil, 1977), claims to have solved this problem by using systematic & hypothetical-inductive reasoning, & by treating power as the basis for all forms of relationship, since there is always a margin of negotiation between actors. Different theoretical positions regarding Crozier's strategic analysis are examined. The advantages of his procedure are stressed & an improvement is suggested that facilitates the understanding of interaction. The assumption of the necessity of systematic integration is questioned, & the methodological difficulties of introducing the cultural element in strategic action are discussed. Modified HA.

The transition to collective action by people who are 'victims' of accidental events seems, superficially, to be enigmatic. With regard to the collective mobilisation of irradiated people, the progression of the patients towards being recognised as being in the medical accident category has generally been a slow process. In contrast, recognising that those recently involved in accidents are 'victims' has been considerably faster. The background of scandals affecting the health sector in recent years does not seem irrelevant to this. They seem to influence the behaviour of those who use the health system, as well as the lawyers who help them when conflict arises. Adapted from the source document.

The post-Marxism of the Essex School is a recognition of the contingent nature of social struggles & identities: the eschewal of any reference to a privileged subject of emancipation as well as an attempt to restore the possibility of political decision-making on the shifting sand of postmodernity. The notion of discursive formation, a product of Foucault's thought, is one of the central concepts thereof; the symbolic framework of the polis thus appears to be composed of an unstable system of heterogeneous significations appended to things & people, a discourse whose hegemonic fixation constitutes the stakes of political struggles. Far from any essentialist teleology proclaiming the end of history, this acceptance of contingency as the privileged terrain of social conflicts serves to renew the role of politics as the deciding of the social structure with regard to its own meaning & of the subject with regard to its own fluctuating & unsettled identity. Adapted from the source document.

David Mitrany is known as the founder of international functionalism. His seminal book, A Working Peace System, dates from 1943 & remains remarkably topical. In defending a global conception of security & a liberal interpretation of peace, his arguments are at the crux of debates on the future of multilateralism. But they also have their weaknesses. An overly rational viewpoint on international behavior & a disproportionate belief in the dynamics of common needs end up suggesting that political conflicts can be resolved by debates among experts. However, these rather standard criticisms in no way detract from Mitrany's intuitions, whether they pertain to the advent of "human security" or the limits of political regionalism. Even more so, it is the quest for a method for "making peace" that constitutes the most novel contribution of Mitrany's functionalism. Pragmatic in its inspiration, it constitutes an unusual approach among international relations scholars. A real practical philosophy, it is also a lesson for their research to study from. Adapted from the source document.

While interest groups have traditionally been considered as a more central force to American politics than to European politics, where the state & parties are held as the dominant forces, recent years have seen a growing presence of what may be referred to as the "European Variant" of the special interest group. This article pays particular attention to the gradual emergence of special interest groups in France & the change that this has brought about for French politics on the wider scale. The presumed state influence in French political life is here suggested to be less than originally estimated, while the traditional French model is turning more & more to a re-structuring of the relationship between the French state & interest groups that largely reflects the demands that globalization & EU integration policy have placed on France. Interest groups operate in power relationships while at the same time being rooted in public space that must account for plurality & conflict of views. Collective action & policy outcome are also considered central points of inquiry into the nature of the interest group in contemporary French politics. These are reviewed here in brief as an introduction to subsequent writings from various authors on the topic. References. C. Brunski

Since celebrating the first democratic elections in Spain in June of 1997, Catalonia has had eleven of its own general elections (Congress of Representatives and the Senate) and 10 elections for the Catalonian Parliament. Throughout these 35 years the voting behavior of the citizens of Catalonia has been characterized by two singular facts: a notable difference of electoral turnout according to the electoral call and a largely different vote as they were choosing the Government of Spain or Catalonia, through respective parliamentary elections. The electoral confrontation in Catalonia has traditionally moved into two political-ideological axes. On one side is the left-right dimension and on the other side is the national axis, configured from the feeling of belonging to Spain or Catalonia and the consideration of the best way to fit Catalonia into the Spanish State. The most significant change which has developed in the past three years has been the growing support for the option of an independent Catalonia in Spain, something which has become a top preference for Catalonian citizens. Adapted from the source document.

Records of civil judicial procedures, interdiction and judicial adviser, throw a new light on three categories of deviant conducts dealt with by justice courts in the nineteenth-century : madness, weakness of intellect and prodigality. The definitions given by jurists to these « affections » allow the historian to perceive the scope of « abnormal » conducts susceptible to be punished by a loss of civil rights. However, recourse to civil justice constituted just one possibility for regulating deviant behavior. But in this particular kind of response the leading actor was the family. In addition, relatives were adopting different strategies, before or beside the transfer of the conflict to the judicial sphere, in order to cope with a troublesome individual. The state and local administration were more active at the institutional level and in the incarceration of too problematic individuals (usually mentally ill persons of a dangerous character). The whole analysis contributes to a better understanding of the respective functions of family, justice and the state in the social regulation of several forms of deviant behavior in the nineteenth-century.

Juan J. Linz suggests that the increase in negative attitudes towards political parties may be less attributable to the behavior of parties themselves than it is to inconsistencies or outright contradictions among relevant belief held by citizens, to unrealistic expectations concerning the extent to which parties can achieve a series of demanding objectives, or to increasing number of the functions that parties must play in representative democracies. Citizens acknowledge that democratic systems require that parties perform certain roles, but then criticize them for performing those roles on the grounds that this would conflict with a different & incompatible set of values. But, unlike in the earlier decades of the twentieth century, anti-party attitudes have not been linked to support for anti-system parties. Adapted from the source document.