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Since 1999, Germany’s reformed citizenship laws permitted the naturalization of some 350,000 ethnic Turkish/Kurdish long-term immigrants in the country. As new German voters, this group now represents about 1 percent of the electorate. But by 2006, the next time German voters will elect a national government, Germany’s political parties expect this voting bloc to double, which will significantly influence the outcome of national elections. This author proposes that despite a 70 percent rate of support among the ethnic Turkish/Kurdish Germans in favor of the Social Democrats and the Green Party, it will be the Free Democrats who will garner a significant percentage of the Turkish/Kurdish vote by 2006. The author intends to evaluate the transformative political impact of the ethnic Turkish/Kurdish vote on Germany’s political landscape. A primary focus in this paper will be on changes in public discourse regarding issues such as business development, immigration, and multiculturalism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper I will argue that any reconciliation process will impact the quality of a democratization process. Consequently the main hypothesis is that the intensity and inclusion of specific actors such as former enemies, perpetrators and victims of human rights violations, minorities, new and old political elites and civil society during the transition period and after a post-conflict, war or authoritarian regime is crucial in order to strengthen democratic institutions and mechanisms. A transition period without any elements of reconciliation will lead to functional failures of newly established democratic institutions such as the rule of law or free elections. Society will not be able to learn to experience justice and thus build trust in (new) democratic institutions. But without an experience of justice through reconciliation a democratization process will never fully succeed because strong and stable democracies depend on trust and proper function of institutions. Examples of Germany, Spain and Turkey in Europe after 1949 will be given to underline the main argument. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that empires were the dominant political actors in the international system up until the mid-twentieth century, and that these empires differed from Westphalian states in crucial legal and practical aspects. Empires were organised as hierarchical sub-systems in an anarchical international system. They included dependent states or state-like entities which complicated the sovereignty of the imperial whole and cast doubt on prevailing theories of the sovereign state. Rejecting IR historiography that has tended to categorise and re-write the past in terms of present, case studies of the Ottoman, British and German Empires illuminate the differences that distinguish these polities from their sovereign state successors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We can make reference to two different main projections of future for the EU: (a) the position defended by France and Germany, which presupposes that there should be ‘not a geographically very big but politically and economically strong social European ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although IR scholars have offered various explanations for the origins of sovereignty, the literature is yet to offer a convincing one. Rejecting the hypothesis to locate sovereignty with Westphalia, this paper traces the emergence of sovereignty to two nineteenth century developments: the dominance of the positivist legal theory and the ascendancy of European states over non-European states. Theoretically, this paper integrates critical legal theory and postcolonial theory into international relations theory. The critical legal theory clarifies how three doctrines that constructed sovereignty (state?s ultimate authority, territoriality, recognition) were directly related to the positivist (as opposed to earlier natural) legal theory. The postcolonial theory illuminates how the positivist legal theory?s construction of sovereignty was related to the legitimization of European and delegitimization of non-European political entities. Sovereignty both justified and enabled Europe? domination over non-European political entities. The empirical part of the paper examines the imposition of extraterritoriality (European states? exclusive jurisdiction over their citizens in non-European states) in Japan, China, Turkey, Iran, and Thailand to provide evidence that positivist legal theory?s attempt to conceptualize the interaction of European states? interaction with the non-European political entities crystallized the doctrine of sovereignty. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The international organization of the Democratic Peace matters. Interdemocratic institutions are particularly suited to block escalation pathways between states and to prevent conflicts from resulting in war. The paper builds on findings from three fields of research: (a) the liberal analysis of the democratic peace, (b) systemic approaches to international institutions, and (c) new quantitative studies of armed conflicts. The paper identifies three pivotal contributions of international institutions to peaceful conflict management. International institutions can be used to overcome the security dilemma among states and to tame power competitions. They sustain international cooperation and forestall the recourse of governments to unilateral self-help strategies. Finally, international institutions increase the autonomy of issue areas, which decreases the risks of destabilizing spill-over effects from other issue areas. The paper holds that these three functions are extra-ordinarily well performed by interdemocratic institutions. Therefore, interdemocratic institutions are considered a missing link in the explanation of the democratic peace.To strengthen our argument, we choose five state dyads for structured-focused comparisons. We investigate the security relations of Argentine and Brazil, Argentine and Chile, Germany and France, Greece and Turkey, and Indonesia and Malaysia. Each of these dyads is integrated in a comparatively dense institutional network and in each case the United States has a hegemonic interest in preserving peace. In a first step, we look for significant differences in the form of international institutions. Do democracies tend to organize their security relations differently than other states? And do the form of international institutions change in predictable ways when their member states democratize? In a second step, we compare the robustness of international institutions in times of crisis. Here we ask whether interdemocratic institutions more effective in transcending the security dilemma and in stabilizing cooperation among member states? ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]