Volume 25, Number 1, 1994

EN:

If we compare the religious tradition of Shi'ite Islam with the ideology Khomeini propounded from 1979 on, it emerges that Khomeini-style Islamism is more of a revolutionary political ideology falling within the category of Western Third-Worldism. It diverges from Shi'itism which has traditionally preached the illegitimacy of power, the need for contestation, the challenging of whatever is established, the search for social justice, the giving of support to the oppressed, and the expectation of a coming messiah. Khomeini exploited this tradition to serve political ends. He interpreted it in his own way and instituted a radical, infallible government of clerics while preaching anti-Westernism and Pan-Islamism intermixed with the exporting of his revolution. Shi'ite Islam has thus lost its traditional religious character, giving rise to confusion between religion and politics to the detriment of the former.

EN:

Like other oil-producing Arab countries, socialist Algeria has followed a specific line of development : that of the rentier State. Its economy has been characterized by dependence on oil revenues which account for 98 % of all export earnings. Among the elites and the population, this income has served to maintain a consensus around the government's power. What happens, however, when the rentier State loses this consensus ? The case of socialist Algeria suggests that the rentier State would then be forced to use up its income, thereby bringing about its disappearance. This unprecedented case may by repeated in other states. Algeria's experience may thus provide us with lessons for understanding the rentier State and the « democratic transition ».

EN:

As revealed by documents in the National Archives in Washington, u.c., the United States routinely and knowingly sent reconnaissance flights over the Soviet Union during the fifties and sixties. The u-2 shootdown of the pilot Francis Gary Powers in 1960 was a manifestation of this dangerous pattern during the Cold War era. The author, the first Fulbright Lecturer to the formerly « closed-to-foreigners » military-industrial city of Nizhny Novgorod, or Gorki, suggests a direct correlation between this pattern of earlier reconnaissance flights and the shoot down of the KAL 007 airliner in 1983. It thus contains implications for current foreign policy in the bold new post-Cold War era, in which the means for surveillance have become more militarily sophisticated and technologically advanced.

EN:

Recent events in world politics raise Fundamental doubts about the reasons behind conflict, crisis and war. What, for example, causes a state to become involved in an international crisis ? In an attempt to answer that question, the present study focuses on the experiences of a leading member of the international System over a sustained period of time, specifically, the United States in the post-World War 11 era. Ultimately, in order to develop a more comprehensive explanation of activity by the United States in international crises, this investigation combines external factors with others from within the state.

Following a brief review of the research program on conflict linkage, internal attributes with potential relevance to involvement by states in crises are identified. External influences on foreign policy, consistent with the tradition of realpolitik, also are specified. These elements then are combined in a model of conflict linkage. Using data pertaining both the US as a polity and an actor in the international System, propositions derived from the model are tested in the crisis domain. The study concludes with some recommendations for further research on the linkage of domestic and foreign conflict, with particular reference to the explanation of crises.

EN:

The fail of communist ideology and the subsequent breaking up of the old empire has allowed an acceleration of the process of world wide exchange liberalization. Population flow adapts itself to the movement naturally, helped by the development of communications, transportation and transnational networks in different parts of the industrialized world. Conflicts, wars, human rights violations and non democratic Systems also contribute extensively to increase the south-north migratory pressures. This contemporary context has led the international community to consider international migrations to be a major threat to world stability and global security.

In this context, the right to seek and to enjoy a safe haven becomes a mere illusion. The survival of the right of asylum is linked to the recognition of the failure of the actual international System. The reality of today's refugee movement calls for new types of solidarities and cooperation which should be inspired by the principles of democracy and human rights protection.