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This paper explores Western European hegemony and power. The focus, however, is not European hegemony over other parts of the world but over non-European immigrants INSIDE of contemporary Europe itself. The paper is a case study of recent Danish legal, educational, and political attempts to better the integration of particularly Muslim immigrants in Denmark. My focus is on how Europe is constructed through these discourses on Muslim immigrants - and how the immigrants in turn are often constructed as alien to European values and norms. By denaturalizing the concepts which these discursive representations rely on (the citizen, the European, the immigrant, etc.), I tease out the silencing or forgetfulness of these representations (for example that Europe is complicit in creating a world of inequality). And based on a close textual reading of the law, the political initiatives, the mandatory civic courses for immigrants, etc., I argue that non-European immigrants in Denmark are kept in a state of eternal Diaspora inside of Europe - despite an official rhetoric of integration. The ambition is to unpack and politicize the Euro-centrism which informs discourses on Europe and which naturalizes the idea of Europe as a moral, acting subject under extreme pressure from Muslim immigrants. Finally, I discuss the theoretical implications of my study which transgresses the national (Danish) and speaks to the construction of regional or international identities. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professionalization of militaries has become one of the central trends in Europe, but there are several anomalies. In this paper, the issue is discussed from two perspectives, evaluating some rationalist accounts and contrasting them with an outlined constructivist perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent crisis in the transatlantic relationship is the next stage in the dialectics of power that have characterized the relationship between the United States and Europe since the end of WWII. This time however the crisis has been deeper than anything seen before and this paper will seek to account for this in a broadly Gramscian framework. Three things are new this time: the determination of the United States to assert its authority within a less multilateral framework; the refusal by key European countries not to be coerced; and finally the post-Cold War context within which this is happening which makes the United States less willing to co-operate with Europe and Europeans less willing to be subordinated to the US. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the transatlantic dimension of European Neighborhood Policy (ENP). It argues that the EU's growing strategic role in the countries and regions of its periphery has significant implications for the US and transatlantic relations. It analyzes the extent to which US and EU interests coincide or conflict in particular parts of the European neighborhood, as well as the prospects for transatlantic cooperation in Europe's "near abroad." It also considers the larger implications of ENP for the US and global order. Contrary to the predominant neo-realist view, I argue that ENP and the EU's growing strategic engagement in its periphery represent a potential challenge for US global hegemony and leadership. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The following analysis of the current transatlantic trade dispute over genetically modified organisms and food draws on a Gramscian notion of hegemony. After discussing the conflict as structural antagonism between European and the US political economies it emphasizes the eminent role of physical risk in the formation of discursive hegemony. It demonstrates that, although the conflict derives its impulses from profound structural disparities and a multitude of social critiques, it persistently narrows down to a debate on biotechnology?s physical risks, which, in turn, becomes decisive in any kind of restrictive regulation, at national, supra- or international level. Three sources of physical risk?s discursive hegemony are proposed. 1. At the level of international regulations only physical risk counts as legitimate reason to curtail international trade with transgenic organisms and products. The reason is that these regulations either function in the context of global trade liberalisation or environmental or health protection. 2. At the level of broad publics the ?attention economy? of modern mass media tends to stage ?risk controversies? which structure not broad public perception but also the workings of responding political systems. 3. At the national regulatory level legal-constitutional principles impair the establishment of any political criteria beyond physical risk to restrict biotechnology. As consequence of the hegemony of physical risk scientific risk debates become the crucial conflict arenas. Science, however, does not conclude the conflict, solely translates it into its own contested language. A final remark considers the possibility of a rupture in discursive hegemony. Did the recent European anti-biotechnology-wave, chiefly driven by consumer concerns, usher in the emergence of a rival to physical risk?s hegemony? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper has two core objectives. The first is to identify the importance of race in defining the character of international relations. This paper argues that (orthodox) IR scholarship has failed to recognise the historical importance of race as a significant factor in the construction of international relations. The paper argues that Europeans Nations utilised a hierarchical colour line which aided in the construction of a global system of super exploitation, which derived ideological legitimacy from the notion of White Supremacy. Moreover the core assumptions derived from European conceptions of race provided the necessary rationale to institute racial oppression, enslavement and European colonialism. Given the seminal role that many authors accord race and racial theories in providing an intellectual framework that facilitated and justified the creation of the structural equalities between European Nations and the non-white world, the academy and IR need to provide the theoretical tools to ascertain the degree to which race impacted on the character of international relations. In short IR theorists must develop theoretical models which both identify and explain how racial ideology played a seminal role in the formation of the current world order.The second objective of the paper involves acknowledging the ideological insurgency mounted by African intellectuals whose writings have been confined to the margins of the critical debate regarding global politics. The paper will provide examples of continental and diasporian Africans tradition of identifying how Europeans utilised racial ideology to ensure group unity; in order to aid their quest for global dominance. In the final analysis this paper suggests that the voices of the disenfranchised members of the African intelligentsia authored an important critique of the canonised view of international relations, which argues that western hegemony is indebted to the strategic use of the colour line in the quest for global dominance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper makes the case for disbanding NATO. Even after the end of the Cold War, NATO serves as an American tool for preventing Europe?s resources from coming under the control of either (1) a single state (Germany or Russia) or (2) a single decision-making authority (an integrated European military). However, this ?aggregation prevention? strategy is no longer necessary: the chances of European military integration are remote and, similarly, the chances that the Europeans will engage in security competition and that a potential hegemon will emerge in the region are also remote. My argument is simple. First, the conditions required for military integration to come about do not exist. Second, European economic integration has ensured that no state has the potential to dominate the region. In other words, if we understand the causes and the consequences of integration then we will also understand that Europe?s resources are unlikely to undergo aggregation in the foreseeable future. NATO therefore no longer serves its primary purpose and ought to be disbanded. The paper ends by considering and rejecting other, secondary, reasons for preserving the alliance. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper starts out with a simple question: how do we fight capital?, thinking this question from within my own location in European and transnational anticapitalist networks.Contemporary capital, we are frequently reminded, operates without a place of power or visible centre. In this paper, however, I will argue that this absence of a place of power does not suggest that capital lacks a centre, operating simply as an immanent phenomenon distributed entirely in the social field. Rather, I will show that the awesome powers of capital to, first, conjugate vast networks of flows in and through new enclosures, and second, to generate our consent to this process of enclosure and subjugation of life, rest on its placeless centre that is the value form.My paper will seek to both develop new theoretical proposals concerning the possibilities of constructing a 'decentred counterhegemony' (a world into which fit many worlds), and to further these theoretical discussions through inclusion of materials from radical ethnographies and engaged research in movement practices. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Does hegemonic power increase ? or decrease ? the likelihood of civil conflict? This paper examines the impact of hegemonic governance on internal conflict including political protests (strikes and anti-government demonstrations); political violence (riots and assassinations); and government responses (declarations of crises and purges). Specifically, we test two competing hypotheses drawn from neo-liberal institutionalism and world systems scholarship. We use comprehensive, multidimensional indicators (from Sacko 2006) to conduct a cross-national, cross-time, empirical investigation of the effects of differing levels of hegemonic power of the United States (1960-2006) on civil conflict in five (5) regions: Latin America, Europe and Central Asia, the Middle East/North Africa, South Asia, and sub-Saharan Africa. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite Marx minuting that, ‘the veiled slavery of the wage workers in Europe needed, for its pedestal, slavery pure and simple in the new world,’ there is a heavily Eurocentric perspective in much historical sociology debate on state formation and the rise of the modern capitalist states-system. This impinges on attempts to understand the origins of capitalism in terms of feudal crisis, agrarian class structures, and economic development in Europe resting on changes in social property relations. In contrast, a contribution is made in this paper to the focus on transformations in social property relations by understanding the social origins of the transition to capitalism in Mexico. There are two principal steps to the argument. First, there is a focus on processes of primitive accumulation that created the conditions of development for capitalist production and national consolidation of the internal market in Mexico. This is understood as a ‘passive revolution’ based on state intervention to guide political modernisation. Second, this account of ‘passive revolution’ in Mexico is related to the subsequent unfolding of the Mexican Revolution (1910-1920) and specifically its so-called ‘institutional phase’ between 1920-1940. Overall, the argument promotes an understanding of state formation and processes of primitive accumulation by tracing the class strategy, or ‘passive revolution’, of the state in Mexico, which gave capitalism there a particular form consistent with authoritarian and hegemonic influence. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Dynasticism played a major role in the conduct of war, peace, and diplomacy in early modern Europe. For much of the period, rulers fought wars mainly to advance claims to territory stemming from marriage and inheritance. Take two examples. First, over the course of a few years Charles of Habsburg managed to acquire effective control over large swaths of Europe by virtue of inheritance. The effect was the rapid formation of a hegemonic power with serious implications for the security of other political communities. Second, Francis I embroiled France in a costly series of wars for hegemony in Italy, yet he did not pursue territorial expansion in other regions, such western Germany, that would have been both easier to achieve and more strategically advantageous for France. The reason? Francis lacked dynastic claims to those regions.All of this suggests that dynastic norms led to very different practices of international politics. But how are we to best understand the relationship between those norms and political behaviors? This paper considers three approaches: structural realism, mainline systemic constructivism, and Krasner's notion of "organized hypocrisy." Evidence from the early modern European experience is both consistent and inconsistent with aspects of all three approaches, which suggests interesting ways that they can be combined to account for systemic variations in the conduct of international affairs.. ..PAT.-Conference Proceeding [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses how the contemporary global international society came about as a result of the expansion to planetary scale of a novel type of a society that emerged in Europe. A global international society may emerged from various civilizational cores of the ancient and classical world and from the takeover of the whole system by one of the civilizational cores. It outlines the classical expansion story in English school literature, as well as how the expansion literature is evolving.

The article focuses on long term threats, such as terrorism, violent conflict, the spread of weapons of mass destruction and the U.S. hegemony. The context of securitization in Europe and the security challenges after the Cold War is analyzed. It compares how neorealism, neoinstitutionalism and social constructivism examine the impact of external structure on perception of security threats. It discusses how threats are formed.