Contemporary world-society: from the globalization of communication to the communicational globalization of the world

Is globalization directly and causally related to communication? If so, how and why? How might a dialectic play out between communication and social interaction? What may the mass media have to do with the globalization of societies? Starting from these questions, the aim of this article is to conceptually approach and problematize the globalization of communication as a consequent transition or a changing process through a communicational globalization of the world. Following a theoretical research and a bibliographical review, this article explores and questions a dialectical perspective about the globalization of contemporaneity that is producing a single and universal world-society. Accepting the general and consensual assumption that communication is a universal form to link people, cultures, and ideas, this article aims: a) to advocate the growing and multiform uses, social functions, mass interactions, and extensive effects of communication in the world, so that our societies become a single contemporary world-society; b) to highlight the dialectic between society and communication through a globalization process, which is common to these two social phenomena

The Welcome Return of Political Economy to International Political Economy Scholarship:States, Markets, and Governance

This chapter argues that methodological pluralism and innovation, combined with new data sources and research technologies, have steadily eroded the divisions observed in the “Cohen debate” on the UK versus US schools of (International) Political Economy. A problem-solving approach that nonetheless addresses big questions of global and normative importance has reduced the influence of “gatekeeper” approaches such as critical theory or Open Economy Politics, integrating many of their insights on the way. Understanding the observable variation in state-market-governance relationships remains central to the contemporary field: a focus on the interface between what people do as they go about their material life, and the many collective forms of governance and organization, private or public, formal or informal, local or cross-border, that emerge as a result

Towards Effective and Accountable Leadership of the Union: Options and Guidelines for Reform. EPIN Working Paper No. 3, January 2003

[From the Executive Summary]. The success of the Convention on the future of the EU will to a great extent depend upon on its answers to the institutional questions. Among these questions, the issue of EU leadership plays a crucial role. In this paper, we identify three challenges for the re-organisation of leadership in the Union: 1. Union leadership has to be more effective. The Union’s growing responsibility for truly governmental tasks (e.g. EMU, CFSP, JHA) makes this an imperative. Enlargement will further add to this necessity. 2. Leadership in the Union should contribute to the democratic character of the Union. Indeed, leadership reform may offer an opportunity to increase the engagement of the people and the visibility of the Union. 3. Leadership reform should not fundamentally distort the Unions institutional balance. The Union is no longer a normal international organisation but neither is it a sovereign political system. Leadership reform must maintain the precarious balance between on the one hand the European general interest and on the other the diversity of national interests. In view of these three challenges, we consider the two main strands of debate that touch upon the issue of leadership in the EU: first, the debate on the election of the Commission President and, secondly, the different proposals for reforming the Council Presidency

Federalism and Resource Control: The Nigerian Experience

Federalism and Resource Control are two contentious issues.  The practice of federalism in Nigeria has elicited several reactions and thus generated critical debates by both scholars, politicians, journalists, commentators and more particularly the oil producing communities of the Niger Delta Region. The list is endless. What has occasioned these reactions and thus generated this un-ending debate? At the centre of the argument, the answers to this very contentious and pivotal question. One fundamental requirement which forms the very basis of any federal arrangement or system of government as postulated by K.C Wheare, is “financial autonomy” of the different units of government in a federation. The centrality of the role of financial autonomy and independence in guaranteeing “true federalism” cannot be overemphasized. Against this background, this paper focused on the Federalism-Resource-Control nexus in Nigeria. The paper finds that, every state in the federation of Nigeria should control and manage the natural resources located therein… this does not approximate the seizure of the oil resources of the Niger Delta by the Niger Delta people, but it indicates a sense of participation. A total of eight recommendations were made in order to guarantee a strong and united federation-Central to these is that, until and unless the constituent parts (states) in the country are sufficiently empowered by enabling practices that conforms   to the principles of federalism peace in the oil producing that region and by extension the country is elusive. The rest part of the paper is divided into six sections-the first section, provided the introduction and  background to the study; the second contextualizes the conceptual underpinnings of Nigeria’s Federalism; the third section deals with Resources Control as a fundamental  feature of true-federalism; the fourth section explains the root causes of the Niger Delta; the fifth section, enumerated some recommendations; the sixth which is the final section concludes the papers with the view that, the essence of true federalism  is to allow each state or region in a federation significant  measure of autonomy to manage its affairs and that, the federalist debate in Nigeria is centered essentially on the need to understand the basis of the contract of true federalism  and resource control. This debate, the paper suggests is long standing, passionate and inconclusive. Keywords: federalism, resource control, niger delta, financial autonomy and conceptual clarification

Has Regionalism Peaked? The Latin American Quagmire and its Lessons

The chapters in this book were originally published in the The International Spectator, volume 47, issue 1 (February 2012).Since 1960, Latin American attempts at regionalism have undergone distinct phases. More notably, they have tended to diverge across space, gradually giving birth to separate blocs that seem to be tearing South, Central and North America apart. Additionally, within and across these regions several overlapping projects coexist. This article focuses on the dynamics of segmented and overlapping regionalism in order to describe what they look like, analyse how they articulate with one another, and explain why member states have pushed for such a messy outcome. This situation, linked to the evolution of the global context, might be indicating that regionalism in Latin America has reached its peak, beyond which it may be difficult to achieve further progress. Two conclusions are elicited: first, economic integration is becoming a geographically diffused phenomenon rather than a regional one; second, regionalism is still a compelling foreign policy but its causes, goals and outcomes are no longer what they used to be

Ciceronian jurisprudence and the Law of Nations

At the turn of the seventeenth century, jurists such as Alberico Gentili (1552–1608) and Hugo Grotius (1583–1645), began to advance a novel account of the law of nations (ius gentium) as a law that binds a world of sovereign states. That they would produce such a theory is surprising, however, considering that sovereign states were neither the dominant form of political organization at the time, nor did conventional medieval jurisprudence treat them as the normative standard. This article traces this evolution to a broader transformation in legal interpretation. In an effort to put Roman law on a more rational foundation, jurists such as François Connan (1508–51) and Hugues Doneau (1527–91) connected the origin of law to the unfolding of a certain account of human sociability, with the result that a conception of the state as an autonomous body acquired a normative status within their version of the global legal order. It then argues that we should see Gentili’s work on the ius gentium as part of this tradition. In so doing, the article demonstrates how the innovations of a particular school of legal interpretation, by combining Roman law with a distinctive social theory, contributed to making the sovereign state the legal norm