The Significance of the Economic Summits

It is argued here that the summits should not be transformed or elevated to some system of global economic governance. Rather, global economic stability depends on good domestic economic policymaking and, thus, the economic summits cannot substitute for effective and effcient policymaking within sovereign nations. The summits, therefore, should be seen first and foremost as a means for improving and generating better domestic policies via cooperation as opposed to delivering packages of coordinated policies. By focusing on international economic policy cooperation, the summits can contribute much to improving domestic economic policymaking. The protest at the Genoa summit and the events of September 11 provide a well-timed opportunity to rethink the format of the summits, to streamline the process, and to return to the European or Rambouillet model of summitry. Perhaps this is the path the summits are on following the “secluded and intimate” 2002 summit in Kananaskis (Bayne, 2002). The world was a very uncertain place in 1975. There were oil shocks, an unsettled foreign-exchange system, and a global recession. The original summit was formed to deal with these uncertainties. The world is again an uncertain place, with financial crises, the emergence of Russia and China as political and economic forces, terrorist attacks on the United States, an economic downturn among the advanced economies, and turbulence in the world’s equity markets. The annual summits remain as a significant forum for sharing information and reducing this uncertainty.

Migration, Resilience and Security: Responses to New Inflows of Asylum Seekers and Migrants

The ubiquity of resilience—the process of patterned adjustments adopted by a society or an individual in the face of endogenous or exogenous shocks—across the broad social sciences spectrum is undisputable. Yet, migration scholars have been relatively absent from this vibrant discussion. The present article suggests a theorisation of the link between migration, resilience and security by examining ways in which resilience precedes a socially constructed understanding of international migration as a security issue. The article explores how the surge in worldwide refugee numbers and associated mass migration phenomena were not only interpreted as a shock in post-Cold War France, but also instrumentalised by dominant discourses to underscore the necessity of adopting a particular pattern of adjustments to uphold the status quo against changes provoked by these migratory events. The social construction of refugee movements and mass migration as a significant disturbance requiring France to opt for a resilient strategy has led, ultimately, to the securitisation of migration. In a broader sense, the article presents a new lens through which to analyse situations and conditions in which resilience has led to and induced the securitisation of migration.This is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis via http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1369183X.2015.104733

The Uses and Abuses of the Euro in the Canadian Currency Debate. Jean Monnet/Robert Schuman Paper Series, Vol. 3 No. 3, August 2003

(From the introduction). In the late 1990s, some prominent Canadian economists – notably Thomas Courchene, Herbert Grubel, Richard Harris, and Robert Mundell – began arguing that a North American common currency would solve the problems underlying the growing gap between U.S. and Canadian real GDP per capita.1 They succeeded in provoking a lively economic policy debate that occurred in parallel with the launch of the euro. The purpose of this paper is to examine the uses – and abuses – of European parallels by both sides in the economic policy debate that peaked in the 1999-2001 period. The body of the paper begins by providing an understanding of the European case. Hence, the second section outlines our interpretation of the major developments in the birth of the euro. The third section, the core of the paper, examines in detail the use of European parallels in the Canadian currency debate. We start by providing a brief overview of the protagonists in the debate. We then continue by arguing that the euro provided a “temporal spur” for the Canadian discussion but that it was only one among several important factors. We argue further that the proponents of a North American common currency relied very little on the European experience to support their case for the need for a common currency. Where they did use the European experience, however, was in their analysis of the institutional form that a common currency in North America might take. We argue that the opponents of a North American common currency were correct in viewing this as an abuse of the European parallel. In the concluding fourth section, we summarize our findings and argue that the most important parallel between the European and North American forces for a common currency is that both were driven primarily by politics

The Euro crisis: a historical perspective

In this research report IDEAS explores the current euro crisis by looking at the debates preceding the conception of the euro. How can the early days of EU monetary cooperation help us understand today's predicament? And what lessons can we draw from them for the euro? Emmanuel Mourlon-Druol is Pinto Fellow at LSE IDEAS. Today's debates about the viability of the eurozone bear a striking resemblance with those about the creation of a European single currency in the late twentieth century. The early steps of European monetary cooperation, the negotiations over the creation of the European Monetary System (EMS), those over the creation of the euro, as well as the other plans suggested which eventually failed (the proposal for a European parallel currency for instance), help us better understand the challenges that the euro faces today. Many of the issues at stake then are indeed still central to debates now. The question of the transfer of resources from richer to poorer member states, the adoption of a German-inspired interpretation of monetary policy, to take but two examples, are issues that anyone reading today's newspapers will be familiar with. This paper argues that looking at these past debates do not just provide an insight into the past – but also helps us better understand our current predicament

Governmental Positions on European Treaty Reforms: Towards a Dynamic Approach.

Governmental positions are a powerful predictor of European treaty reforms. Yet, few empirical studies analyze the conditionalies between positions over different issues or conflict dimensions. If governmental positions are conditional upon the real or expected outcome on other issues, the sequence of decisions becomes increasingly important for our understanding of European treaty reforms. So far, not many studies analyze the sequence of intergovernmental decisions. In the present paper, I argue that governmental preferences over the reform of the EU decision rule dependent on the delegation of competences to the EU and vice versa. Moreover, I present a statistical model which allows for estimating this conditionality. Subsequently, I apply this model to an extensive data set of reform positions revealed by national governments at the Intergovernmental Conferences (IGC) 2003/4. Next, I analyze the sequence of decision taken by this particular IGC in chronological order. For this purpose, I predict the change of governmental position in response to the decisions over subsets of issues and I compare these predictions to public statements issued by governmental leaders at the time. Finally, I discuss the implications for our understanding of the intergovernmental bargaining outcome

Le chiffre dans le discours politique français contemporain: V. Giscard d'Estaing et les autres présidents

In their speeches, the politicians use much quantification (numbers and dates). This is shown by the comparison of speeches by many French politicians to a wide excerpt of modern French of 30 million words, all labeled. Numbers and dates are used to anchor a speech in the present times and in the economic and social reality. An illustration is given with the help of the V. Giscard d'Estaing's presidential speeches (1974-1981) compared to the ones by the other five French presidents between 1958 and 2012.Dans leurs discours, les politiques utilisent beaucoup la quantification (nombres et dates). C'est ce que révèle la comparaison des discours tenus par un grand nombre de responsables politiques français quand on les compare à un vaste échantillon du français moderne comportant 30 millions de mots, tous étiquetés. Les chiffres et les dates servent à donner aux discours un ancrage dans le temps, la réalité économique et sociale. Une illustration est donnée avec V. Giscard d'Estaing (1974-1981) comparé aux cinq autres présidents de la République entre 1958 et 2012