This
website is a forum for all those who
would like to invent themselves, their
communities, villages, cities, countries,
or their region: Central Europe.
Fifty Ytears After: The Strassburg Declaration of the European Parliament on 1956
On the 26th of October 2006, there was a commemoration in the Strassbourg meeting of the European Parliament on the historic significance of the Hungarian revolution in 1956.
In June this year European Parliament elections will be held. As we face a dramatic financial and economical crisis, a world in peril and wars and conflicts around the globe, these elections are of great importance for the future of Europe.
We are witnessing the transformation of the naton state and the constitution of a hybrid state with hybrid competencies and scope. This is a hybrid that is neither fully private nor fully public, neither fully national nor fully global.
I have been asked to produce my thoughts on this question by a Hungarian intellectual even though I am a mere visitor to Hungary. My credentials have to be found in my ancestry rather than my passport and perhaps in my obvious delight in the very concept of a coffee-house culture.
Modern IR theory has been much enlivened in the past decade by the emergence of what seems to be a new arrival in the field. This is the rise of ‘soft power’, or the rising of Venus from the waves to challenge Mars as the arbiter of international destinies.
Soviet culture revolved around the ambition of a nation of workers to create a new individual and an alternative civilization to the West – this endeavor failed, but left many unanswered questions in its wake.
The title of this paper, “Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde: The Strange Case of the United States,” is of course a play on the title of Robert Louis Stevenson’s popular novel written in 1885 - The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll & Mr. Hyde.
There is a long accepted proposition in political science, that whereas a dictatorship can coexist with markets, for democracy a market is a necessary condition. What this proposition does not analyse, though, is the nature and quality of these phenomena -- what we mean by authoritarianism and how our social and political life should be determined by market actors.
We should always keep in mind that the new media can also invent new ways to deceive and mislead through abuse and manipulation, promoting anti-cosmopolitan values and interests like nationalism, xenophobia and exclusion. New opportunities, challenges and responsibilities.
There are more and more people asking how did we manage to make such a mess of it all? Why did we fail to retain and capitalise on the initial advantage and positive evaluation that this country had at the outset?
Something has happened to the Future; in a sense we have lost it. Concentrating on the moment, on the immediate fulfillment of our desires, we have forgotten how to dream.
Selected myths, narratives, stories, and the divergent evocation of the past became the recurrent and most important element in the political discourse and mass demonstrations in transitional Hungary.
The new Reform Treaty will help the European integration process, but from a civil society point of view the way in which it was conducted was disastrous.
Analysing the Polish situation with regard to the Lisbon objectives of growth and employment, we see that although the Polish situation is by far the most difficult in this respect in the EU, there are certain phenomena that point to the right direction.
Soft power, and the ability to shape information and images in the modern world is the most important form of power. And the real problem is that right now this power rests with Hollywood and the media corporations – says Professor Barber.
As it crosses the largely unchartered seas of globalisation, the European Union sometimes implements policies which prove inadequate for reforming its economy, strengthening its internal decision-making or seeking greater influence internationally – not least to help shape the governance of globalisation itself.
Changes are inevitable. Substantial renewal is needed within the circles of the Hungarian political class and the formal democratic institutions they run, shifting the intellectual and leadership paradigm and the perception of the scope of responsibilities.
This paper looks at the impact the enlargement of the European Union to 25 Member States (and more recently to 27) is having on the working of the Council of Ministers – including the current system of Presidencies and on the European Council. It then also assesses the possible impact on the institutions – including the Team Presidencies – of the reforms now under discussion following the protracted stalemate created by the French and Dutch refusal to ratify the Constitutional Treaty.
The U.S. would like to see a world in which liberal economic principles, democratic political systems and strong civic societies prevail. In other words: the U.S. is interested in promoting globalization with its horizontal structures. This policy necessarily clashes with that of such (semi)-autocratic states such as Russia.
This paper offers a brief outline of the attempts at interpretation of the transition process that took place in Hungary – and, with some variations, in the other Central and Eastern European countries – over the past decade and a half.
