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Wishful Thinking Among European Parliamentarians

Sören Holmberg

in Political Representation and Legitimacy in the European Union

This chapter is the last of six on the question of political representation in the EU. It examines the extent to which European parliamentarians have the correct view of voters’ preferences, and the ... More

This chapter is the last of six on the question of political representation in the EU. It examines the extent to which European parliamentarians have the correct view of voters’ preferences, and the extent to which ‘wishful thinking’—the tendency to see what one wants to see—is a problem in this context. Previous research on this subject is first briefly summarized, and then an analysis is made of data from the European Representation Study on elite perceptions (perceptions of members of the European Parliament, MEPs, and of national parliaments, MNPs) of voter attitudes to four issues: a common European currency; a massive employment policy within the EU; the removal of national borders; and the left–right dimension. The elite perception data are used to test three hypotheses derived from perceptual theory and previous research on elite perception of mass attitudes. Three models of perceptual accuracy, designated assimilation ordering, contrast ordering, and wrong direction ordering, are also advanced. Overall, it is found that a largely irrational tendency towards wishful thinking is more significant for members’ knowledge of voter opinion than other more rational processes of knowledge acquisition; however, the parties that made this analysis possible (i.e. those with opinions differing from those of their voters) constituted a minority among both MNPs (30%) and MEPs (28%), which is precisely the situation in which information channels need to be functioning better rather than worse.Less

Convergence as Strategy: Scope and Limits

David J. Gerber

in Global Competition: Law, Markets, and Globalization

This chapter looks analytically at the dynamics of economic globalization, and the economic and political contexts to which any transnational competition law strategy must respond. These dynamics ... More

This chapter looks analytically at the dynamics of economic globalization, and the economic and political contexts to which any transnational competition law strategy must respond. These dynamics feature interplays between national and transnational interests, objectives, institutions and ideas. National borders remain the key factor in this interplay. The chapter then examines convergence as a strategy for global competition law development; the idea that increases in similarities among competition law systems throughout the world are likely and that they will significantly improve the jurisdictional regime. The analysis identifies the potential of convergence, but also reveals its weaknesses and limitations. It concludes that meaningful and effective convergence over broad areas of competition law is less likely than some assume and that by itself, convergence is not an adequate response to the challenges of protecting global competition and securing widespread national support for it.Less

Propaganda as Necessity

Gregor Thum

in Uprooted: How Breslau Became Wroclaw during the Century of Expulsions

This chapter explores how the integration of the former German territories into the Polish state was a complex undertaking. Not only did the area have to be settled to a sufficient density, but the ... More

This chapter explores how the integration of the former German territories into the Polish state was a complex undertaking. Not only did the area have to be settled to a sufficient density, but the administrative structures of the old territories also had to be expanded to serve the needs of the new territories. Efficient transportation connections had to be created between regions that had previously been separated by a national border, a uniform economic area had to be developed, and Polish cultural and educational institutions had to be established throughout the western territories. The task of merging two entirely different parts of a country into a single, homogeneous nation soon revealed the limits of what political power could accomplish.Less

What Makes a Good Border?

Catherine Tatiana Dunlop

in Cartophilia: Maps and the Search for Identity in the French-German Borderland

This chapter explores how citizen mapmakers in modern France and Germany invented new kinds of unofficial territorial boundaries that rivalled the official state borders discussed in Chapter 1. These ... More

This chapter explores how citizen mapmakers in modern France and Germany invented new kinds of unofficial territorial boundaries that rivalled the official state borders discussed in Chapter 1. These unofficial territorial boundaries—including ethnic, historical, linguistic, and racial borders—served the function of orienting and bounding national territory according to cultural parameters. The patriotic mapmakers who developed a passion for mapping idealized visions of French and German national territories were scholars from the nineteenth century’s budding social scientific disciplines: ethnographers, anthropologists, statisticians, linguists, geographers, and historians who were deeply interested in the social and cultural identity of land. In order to promote their claims to disputed Alsace-Lorraine, French and German nationalists disseminated unofficial border maps to a variety of civil associations and displayed them in prominent public settings.Less

Continental Ops: Crossing Borders in North American Crime Narrative

Adams Rachel

in Continental Divides: Remapping the Cultures of North America

This chapter explains how detective novels from Canada, the United States, and Mexico have approached the subject of cross-border crime, and what those representations tell about how North Americans ... More

This chapter explains how detective novels from Canada, the United States, and Mexico have approached the subject of cross-border crime, and what those representations tell about how North Americans view their closest neighbors. The contemporary North American detective novels from three very different cultural contexts provide a revealing example of what Fredric Jameson called an “ideology of form,” the implicit beliefs and values that reside in a work's generic structure. Genres tell documents of the institutions and values that are important to a given society. When they migrate across borders, it becomes especially apparent which values travel and which are rooted in a very particular place and time. The detective novel, which explores the commission of crime and the restoration of order, has proved to be a vital medium for North Americans to reflect on their place in an increasingly integrated continent where people and things move across national borders.Less

Consolidating the New Culture of Border Control: Schengen in the European Union

in Cultures of Border Control: Schengen and the Evolution of European Frontiers

This chapter explores the consolidation of Schengen culture by looking at the main events that followed Schengen's communitarization and at selected policy initiatives elaborated. Also, it analyzes ... More

This chapter explores the consolidation of Schengen culture by looking at the main events that followed Schengen's communitarization and at selected policy initiatives elaborated. Also, it analyzes how the consolidation of Schengen has involved the border control community. Schengen was able to consolidate its dominant position in the border control domain. The advances introduced by the Amsterdam Treaty had strengthened the European Union (EU)'s role as an active player on the international stage. The European Neighbourhood Policy appeared to be a promising development in the EU's foreign policy. The European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) can be considered the latest “victim” of the Schengen culture's spread into new areas of EU policy. The “comprehensive” response to the terrorism adopted by EU governments and institutions has contributed to the further blurring of the distinction between internal and external security and to the deemphasis of the significance of national borders to guarantee Europe's security.Less

Introduction: Muslim African Refugees and Border Politics

Cawo M. Abdi

in Elusive Jannah: The Somali Diaspora and a Borderless Muslim Identity

The introduction makes the case for going beyond the simplistic distinctions often drawn between refugees and migrants, and between settlement and transnationalism. It also calls for more attention ... More

The introduction makes the case for going beyond the simplistic distinctions often drawn between refugees and migrants, and between settlement and transnationalism. It also calls for more attention to the bifurcated nature of globalization, with enhanced importance of national borders simultaneous with the increased imaginations of people in the furthest corners of the globe who seek to overcome those borders. It also criticizes the immigration and citizenship policies in United Arab Emirates, South Africa, and the United States. It reveals these issues by having three immigrants, one from each of the three countries, tell their own personal stories.Less

Indigenous Peoples and Colonial Borders: Sovereignty, Nationhood, Identity, and Activism

Sarah Maddison

in Border Politics: Social Movements, Collective Identities, and Globalization

This chapter considers the contemporary implications for Indigenous peoples attempting to both recover and rebuild their nations while simultaneously asserting a political voice that often transcends ... More

This chapter considers the contemporary implications for Indigenous peoples attempting to both recover and rebuild their nations while simultaneously asserting a political voice that often transcends precolonial national borders. Focused mainly on the Australian case, it also draws comparisons with Indigenous peoples in Canada and the United States in considering the challenges of trying to develop a pan-Indigenous political identity in a colonial/postcolonial nation that has never recognized the borders of Indigenous nations. Implicit in this analysis is an understanding of the deep and wide-ranging diversity of Indigenous life and culture, both within Australia and elsewhere in the world. Despite this diversity, however, the category of indigeneity still functions to denote a political solidarity among colonized peoples, including with regard to their precolonial borders, such as is evident at the United Nations through the development on the Declaration of the Rights of Indigenous Peoples.Less

The Borderwork of Humanitarianism During Displacement from War-Torn Syria: Livelihoods as Identity Politics in Northern Lebanon and Southeast Turkey

Estella Carpi

in Mobility and Forced Displacement in the Middle East

This chapter attempts to add nuance to the scholarly debate on the security politics of borders and invites its readers to consider the practices and identities of refugees, host border societies, ... More

This chapter attempts to add nuance to the scholarly debate on the security politics of borders and invites its readers to consider the practices and identities of refugees, host border societies, and earlier border migrants in a way that considers their pre-crisis (im)mobility status within the hybrid human realm of the border. The vacillating status of earning a living across the border in times of peace pervades the space of local citizenship during displacement. Against this backdrop, a clear-cut humanitarianism along borders—purporting to distinguish who is the host and who is the guest—acts as a force intended to preserve nation-state privileges. This vacillating status between borders represents the local citizens’ desire that the refugees return home as soon as possible; the refugees, in turn, are left to deal with the paradox of this request, as they are unable to definitively choose either site. It is in this vein that this chapter engages with ungraspable categories of life—and humanitarian labels—pushing border-crossing beyond a matter of life or death, and draws on the taxonomies that humanitarian borderwork and national border policies engender.Less

Transactionalist Theory under Further Empirical Scrutiny: Purpose and Scope of Interactions

Theresa Kuhn

in Experiencing European Integration: Transnational Lives and European Identity

Chapter 6 analyses which transactions are most effective in promoting European identity and EU support by examining the purpose and scope of transnational interactions. Sociable interactions, such as ... More

Chapter 6 analyses which transactions are most effective in promoting European identity and EU support by examining the purpose and scope of transnational interactions. Sociable interactions, such as socializing with other Europeans, are more effective than purely instrumental ones such as trade, suggesting that questions of collective identity rather than utilitarian considerations underlie the relationship between individual transnationalism and orientations towards European integration. Analyses show that intra-European interactions have a stronger effect on European identity than interactions beyond European borders. Assuming that people living at intra-European borders primarily interact with the people across the border, the chapter focuses on intra-European border regions and shows that transnational interactions among border residents have a smaller impact on EU support than among the rest of the population, suggesting that to effectively trigger EU support and European identity, transactions should take place within the EU, and with more than one member state.Less

Security and Securitization: The Bonded Warehouse

Dara Orenstein

in Out of Stock: The Warehouse in the History of Capitalism

One type of warehouse was the direct precedent for the foreign-trade zone in the United States: the bonded warehouse, the subject of this chapter. Congress authorized the spatial form of the bonded ... More

One type of warehouse was the direct precedent for the foreign-trade zone in the United States: the bonded warehouse, the subject of this chapter. Congress authorized the spatial form of the bonded warehouse in the Warehousing Act of 1846, following the recommendation of Treasury Secretary and ex-slaveholder Robert J. Walker that as an empire-state the United States should copy Great Britain in establishing a warehousing system. The bonded warehouse helped generate liquidity, allowing importers to be able to delay paying tariffs by storing dutiable goods at ports of entry under the watchful eye of the Customs Service. Starting in 1870, this provision even extended to railroads and rivers that Congress designated as “bonded” routes, to cover dutiable goods in transit to interior ports of entry like Chicago and St. Louis. The warehousing system stretched the national border. Its elasticity provoked legitimate fears of smuggling and dumping, and as a result the Treasury Department limited its range by clamping down on what could happen inside a bonded warehouse. Legally and architecturally, a bonded warehouse was a fortress.Less

Epilogue: Pope Francis on Migration

Marcelo Sánchez Sorondo

in Humanitarianism and Mass Migration: Confronting the World Crisis

Migration is a shared condition of all humanity. We have all been strangers in a strange land. All humanity lives today as a result of migration, by themselves or their ancestors. Migration is a ... More

Migration is a shared condition of all humanity. We have all been strangers in a strange land. All humanity lives today as a result of migration, by themselves or their ancestors. Migration is a matter sometimes of choice, often of need, and always an inalienable right. All helpless people deserve to be helped. Offering such help is a commandment and a blessing shared among all religions. Accordingly, as Pope Francis reminds us, our duties to migrants include “to welcome”, “to protect”, “to promote”, and “to integrate.” National borders are not a result of primary natural law, as aren’t private property and clothes, “because nature did not give [humans] clothes, but art invented them”. National borders depend on social, political and geographical factors. Therefore, faced with current waves of mass migration, in order to establish practices that respond to the common good we need to be guided by three levels of responsibility. The first principle being that “in case of need all things are common”, because “every man is my brother”. This principle is relative to existence or subsistence and conditions other related issues (such as accommodation, food, housing, security, etc.). Secondly, as part of the fundamental rights of people, legal guarantees of primary rights that foster an “organic participation” in the economic and social life of the nation. Access to these economic and social goods, including education and employment, will allow people to develop their own abilities. Thirdly, a deeper sense of integration, reflecting responsibilities related to protecting, examining and developing the values that underpin the deep, stable, unity of a society— and, more fundamentally, create a horizon of public peace, understood as St. Augustine’s "tranquility in order". In particular, with regards to the aforementioned context, policies on migration should be guided by prudence, but prudence must never mean exclusion. On the contrary, governments should evaluate, “with wisdom and foresight, the extent to which their country is in a position, without prejudice to the common good of citizens, to offer a decent life to migrants, especially those truly in need of protection. Strangely enough, the response of most governments in the face of this phenomenon only seems to value the third principle, completely disregarding the first two.Less

Challenging Borders, Imagining Europe: Transnational LGBT Activism in a New Europe

Phillip M. Ayoub and David Paternotte

in Border Politics: Social Movements, Collective Identities, and Globalization

This chapter discusses transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism at the international European level and on the ground in Central and Eastern Europe. LGBT activists have ... More

This chapter discusses transnational lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) activism at the international European level and on the ground in Central and Eastern Europe. LGBT activists have imagined a new sociopolitical European community, challenging the frontiers of exclusion and the modes of belonging of the liberal nation-state. These activists are not simply extending a liberal notion of rights to an unrecognized group. By imagining Europe as, in part, defined by the inclusion of LGBT people, they are redefining “rights” and forms of citizenship that transcend the bounded nation-state. LGBT activism in Central and Eastern Europe, then, contributes to rebuilding the meaning of Europe from the ground up. Yet, borders remain when these efforts created new hierarchies among activists and paradoxically reinforced a distinction between the “modern West” and the “homophobic East.” This underscores the importance of bringing together the analysis of internal and external dynamics of border construction and resistance to develop more comprehensive understandings of material and symbolic border politics.Less