Volume 26, numéro 2, 1995

EN :

This study evaluates the impact of institutional forms on public policies in areas related to the wage relationship. We suggest that four political-institutional models, based on the configuration of political and social forces and of Systems of interest representation are accompanied by differentiated macroeconomic policies. This relationship is studied, with regression equations, for many issues of macroeconomic policies (unemployment, inflation, public expenditure, social transfers, public finances, economic growth), for two periods (1960-1975,1976-1988) and for twelve countries (Canada, United States, France, Italy, Great Britain, West Germany, Belgium, Netherlands, Norway, Sweden, Austria, Denmark). It is possible to conclude that there is a relationship between models and shapes of macroeconomic policies, but there is not necessarily stability in political choices from one period to the other.

EN :

At the end of the Uruguay Round talks, the social dimension to world trade liberalization is still a subject of sharp controversy. The question has come up time and again over the last fifty years, particularly in response to certain American initiatives. It never could provide common ground for the interests of all parties present on the international stage. The possibility of agreeing on its raison d'être has seemed, from that point on, impossibly vain. In a context of increasingly deeper economic integration, in which trade liberalization is not inconsequential to domestic industries, the seriousness of the worker protection issue is no longer debatable. The idea of linking the opening of markets to respect for certain basic social standards seems both unavoidable to some and unacceptable to others. The following article casts a retrospective look on the debates raised during the last few decades over what is now commonly called the "social clause".

EN :

The UN operation in Cambodia was a major venture provided with extensive resources and entrusted to implement a highly ambitious program contained in the Paris Accords signed on October23, 1991. Today, official rhetoric speaks of a "model" when referring to what a more modest view would treat as an experience - one from which it is indispensable to draw all the lessons. The UN proved unable to carry out much of its mission. It jailed to disarm the rival troops. It jailed to neutralize the Communist party's omnipresent influence over existing administrative structures. It failed to repair or rebuild a minimum of infrastructure in such basic areas as health, education, and communications. It failed to reintegrate into society the 372,000 refugees who had come back from camps in Thailand. It failed to preserve the country's unity and territorial integrity. Yet it did score some successes. It laid the ground work for a pluralistic society. It repatriated the refugees. It organized elections that were free and fair enough to allow new, thoroughly legitimate institutions to come into being. A cautious assessment of this operation leads to a reflection on the conditions for success or failure of such a venture. Lessons are to be learned from each step : starting from the diplomatic moves behind the decision to carry out the operation and the mandate defining its scope ; and ending with the political, economic, and social repercussions due to thousands of soldiers and foreign civilian administrators passing through the country. Each phase of the flow of operations must also be questioned, from recruitment of personnel to assessment of the results obtained.

EN :

Franco's Spain flattered itself as enjoying a preferential relationship with the Arab World, as with Latin America as well - a kind of compensation for Spain's lack of normalization within the international System. With its transition to democracy, Spain's place in the world has been redefined and, consequently, so have its relations in the Mediterranean. This has taken place in a context made difficult by Spain's integration into European and Western institutions, an integration that holsters it but no longer lets it take advantage of its different status. This redefinition has also occurred as Spain faces increased risks of destabilization from countries along the southern shoreline, which pose a very direct security problem for Spain. The policies it has implemented expose the divisions between several kinds of logic. They also reveal the many constraints Spain must face in a region split along different lines and in which it finds itself completely immersed.

EN :

Africa's new constitutions have arisen from a dynamic of relative globalization in an era of Western preeminence. Thus, they are both barometers and instruments of international policy. The method of constitutional ecology can be used to measure the impact of international policy by examining the degree to which human rights have been firmly entrenched in Africa's new constitutions. It is also possible to measure the relative extent to which the international viewpoint has been taken into account in the internal order. As "barometers", the instrumentality of Africa's new constitutions is in relation to their being templates of the international legal order. Hence the principle of constitutionality (or "constitutional bases") of official diplomacy.