Südosteuropa und Lateinamerika - fern und nah: unterschiedliche Wege zur Staatsbildung und ihre Folgen

This article explores different patterns of interpreting reality in Southeastern Europe and Latin America. It claims that in Latin America, a principal mode of viewing society, politics and international relations is the social paradigm - i.e. a cognitive stress on the contrast between the rich and the poor, the empowered and the powerless. Southeastern Europe, in opposition to that, has developed a dominant national paradigm, which tends to underline national differences rather than social ones. This contrast is rooted in different imperial legacies -while the Spanish colonial empire left behind societies with vast social cleavages, the Ottoman Empire produced a certain degree of social equality among its Christian citizens. Other factors are historical memory and geography- national liberation in Southeastern Europe proceeded from competing historical projects rooted in the middle ages, which often pretended to the same lands on a rather small peninsula. The resulting wars deepened national identities and produced societies used to interpreting danger in terms of national foes. In Latin America, the national states developed out of the colonial provinces, so that border disputes as well as wars between neighboring states were rare. Here, economic exploitation and domination -both within society but also on the international level- advanced as main themes of discourse, a fact that rather helped to develop a common Latin American identity than national identities. Both paths have deep consequences for contemporary integration projects, since Latin American states (or civil societies) tend to form coalitions vis-à-vis neoliberal US policies. Meanwhile, Southeast European States rarely articulate common interests but go their way to Europe in a rather isolated manner, displaying distrust rather of ethnic others than of the European Union

Der dritte Weg ins Zwielicht? Korruption in Tito-Jugoslawien

This article shows that corruption in socialist Yugoslavia was a specific phenomenon when compared to the inter-war period or to post-socialism. In contrast to liberalism, communist ideology did not support an understanding of corruption as a problem of its own but tended to see political and material “deviations” as originating from the same root – i.e. from a lack of political morale. The League of Communists failed to live up to its role as an educator of society, since it was trapped between declarative moral rigorism and the fact that material need and greed could be satisfied best by becoming a party member. Corruption practices often did not involve bribes but still fit into Transparency International’s broad definition of corruption as the “the abuse of entrusted power for private gain”, in particular for obtaining rare goods such as apartments, jobs or raw materials. While the anticorruption discourse in socialist Yugoslavia was often linked to anti-bureaucratic, anti-elitist and sometimes to dogmatic communist stances, liberal remedies such as transparent and regular procedures were also discussed and applied, though less frequently. The article is based on archival sources from the League of Communists and other Yugoslav institutions. Since the research was centered on Serbia, the majority of concrete examples come from this republic

Eine russisch-islamische Synthese? Interaktionsmuster zwischen Christen, Muslimen und Staat im Wolgaraum vom Mittelalter bis in die Gegenwart

Russlands Krieg gegen die Ukraine wird zwar von der Führung der Russisch-Orthodoxen Kirche mit spirituellen Motivationen "unterfüttert"; allerdings stehen auch andere Glaubensgemeinschaften des Landes hinter dem Krieg, darunter maßgeblich die islamische. Die vorliegende Studie argumentiert, dass das gegenwärtige orthodox-islamische Bündnis zwar tiefe Wurzeln in der russischen Geschichte hat, sich aber keineswegs zwangsläufig aus der historischen Erfahrung ergibt. Ferner wird am historischen Umgang Russlands mit Muslimen gezeigt, dass religiöse Vielfalt über weite Strecken der russischen Geschichte keineswegs die Säkularität stärkte - das russische Diversitätsmanagement kam (und kommt) häufig ohne eine religionsneutrale Plattform der Verständigung aus. Das erscheint aus westlicher Sicht problematisch, weil in unsere Vorstellungen einer "regelbasierten Weltordnung" das Menschenrecht auf Gewissensfreiheit tief eingeschrieben ist. Vor der Vergleichsfolie nicht-westlicher Gesellschaften (z.B. Indiens) erscheint das "konservative Diversitätsmanagement", welches auf einer Schnittmenge von religionsübergreifend geteilten Vorstellungen und traditionellen Verhaltensmustern basiert, aber keineswegs ungewöhnlich