Fundamental Critique Research Articles

Neither Bandits nor Madmen: Modern African Insurgents

African Guerrillas: Raging against the Machine. Edited by Morten Boas, Kevin C. Dunn Boulder: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 2007. 275 pp., $58.00 cloth (ISBN: 1-58826-495-4), $23.50 paper (ISBN: 1-58826-471-8). One of the notable characteristics of the African political landscape at the beginning of the twenty-first century is the persistence of political violence perpetrated by armed insurgencies. Because guerrilla movements have such a far reaching impact, not only on politics and the peace and security of the continent but also on the pace of economic development and social stability, it is critical for scholars and practitioners alike to accurately understand the motives, sources, and nature of African guerrilla movements. In their provocative edited volume, African Guerrillas: Raging against the Machine , Morten Boas and Kevin Dunn provide a reconceptualization of guerrilla movements. Specifically, they and their contributors challenge the facile assumption that African movements can be understood in terms of “single-factor” explanations that regard contemporary insurgents as “devoid of any kind of political agenda” or “greed-based approaches [that] present them as bandits” (p. 1). As the contributors show, not only are these explanations empirically suspect, they also leave policymakers with few options for dealing with guerilla movements—short of brute force. Politically motivated insurgents can be negotiated with; bandits cannot. At its core, African Guerrillas mounts a fundamental critique of the “insular, positivist-dominated field of US political science” (p. 4). Boas and Dunn advocate a “holistic, historically grounded approach” to understanding the complexities of African guerrilla movements, which “are best understood as rational responses to the composition of African states and their polities” (p. 4). Current guerrilla movements, they write, “seem more like manifestations of rage against the ‘machinery’ of dysfunctional states, their equally fragmented and corrupted institutions and the uneven impact of a globalized modernity” (p. 5). Importantly, the contributors to African Guerrillas employ this contextually grounded approach throughout the volume. After framing the …

Illiberal justice: John Rawls vs. the American political tradition

Often considered the greatest American political philosopher of the twentieth century, and the most important liberal theorist since John Stuart Mill, John Rawls enjoys a practically sacrosanct status among scholars of political theory, law, and ethics. In Illiberal Justice, David Schaefer offers the most thorough challenge to Rawls' doctrine yet published, demonstrating how his teachings deviate from the core tradition of constitutional liberalism as exemplified by leading American statesmen from the founders through Lincoln and beyond. Illiberal Justice is the first comprehensive overview of all of Rawls' writings, emphasizing the continuity in his thought and intention to a greater extent than other scholars have done. Schaefer offers a fundamental critique of both Rawls' conception of political philosophy and the policy judgments he derives from his of justice. Schaefer argues that Rawls' failure to ground his teaching about justice in a serious analysis of human nature or an empirical grasp of political life is symptomatic of a larger crisis within contemporary liberal political and jurisprudential theorizing. Although Rawls is commonly viewed as a welfare-state liberal, Schaefer stresses that his writings actually embody a radical transformation of liberalism in the direction of libertarianism that deviates sharply from the American liberal tradition. Citing empirical evidence of the persistence of political and economic opportunity in America, Schaefer challenges Rawls' allegations that our polity suffers from grave injustices. He points out the strikingly apocalyptic tone of Rawls' last writings, in which Rawls even questions whether human existence is worthwhile if his principles are not actualized. Illiberal Justice is not only a critique of Rawls' political program and philosophic methodology, it is also a defense of the American constitutional order against Rawls' dogmatic theorizing, which Schaefer argues has exercised an increasing, and detrimental, effect on our jurisprudence. By combining a thorough critical exegesis of Rawls' texts with a broad engagement with the tradition of political philosophy and American political thought, Schaefer makes an important contribution to both our understanding of Rawls and the enterprise of political philosophy.

Greening the Danes? Experience with consumption and environment policies

Consumer-oriented environmental policies came high on the political agenda during the 1990s. Internationally, consumers were assigned a key role in environmental policies; also in Denmark, political initiatives were taken to promote sustainable consumer behaviour. In this article, the results of Danish policies related to consumption and environment are assessed by considering first, the environmental impacts of the political measures, and second, whether the policies have succeeded in addressing the dynamics behind increasing consumption. The study combines a theoretical understanding of consumption as an inseparable part of daily practices with empirical analyses of three fields of consumption: housing, transportation, and information and communication technology. It is pointed out that policies to promote sustainable consumption are successful only when technological development, economic structures, and information are all in accordance with each other, and this is the case only when sustainable consumption does not conflict with economic growth. A more fundamental critique thus concerns the failure of Danish consumer-oriented environmental policies to address consumption growth and the rising standards for “normal consumption.”

Antiamerikanismus im 20. Jahrhundert: Studien zu Ost- und Westeuropa (Anti-Americanism in the twentieth century: Studies on eastern and western Europe)

This volume confirms that anti-Americanism is a heterogeneous set of biases and stereotypes that has remained particularly prominent among educated and bourgeois groups in Europe, a continent that has been exposed to American economic, political, and cultural influences at least since the late nineteenth century. Not surprisingly, though, this volume does not arrive at a coherent definition of the term. The attempt of the editors to distinguish between a “classical anti-Americanism” and one that was “radical” and “limitless” is not taken up by the succeeding contributions (p. 16). Undoubtedly, anti-American stereotypes could serve as a potential way to mobilize fears and aggressions to new ends. Konrad Jarausch's profound essay on “anti-Americanism as a projection” comes nearest to a comprehensive explanation by disentangling the idiosyncratic motives of both the European Left and Right in distancing themselves from America—ranging from a fundamental critique of capitalism to cultural fears about a U.S.-style, consumer-oriented modernity as a threat to the true culture of the Christian occident. Andrei S. Markovitz's astute essay is even more pointed: Anti-Americanism may offer an ideological glue for the European Union, one, however, that in recent years—as in the past—has shown an appalling connection with anti-Semitic tendencies.

Utopija, nuo kurios norisi bėgti : kultūros krizės teorijos ir jų refleksijos J. Ivanauskaitės romane „Placebas“

In this article the author explores the utopian nature of the Enlightenment project and highlights some of the project’s cultural contradictions, notably the intense development of material, external culture and its controversial impact upon individual consciousness. These questions surface in the works by J. J. Rousseau, G. Simmel, O. Spenger, J. Ortega y Gasset and many other theorists, yet the fundamental critique of the Enlightenment and its discontents was developed in mid-twentieth century by the critical theorists of the Frankfurt school. Th. Adorno, M. Horkheimer and H. Marcuse, among others, have argued that the idea of instrumental rationality, inherited from the Enlightenment, has turned into stupefying, deceptive culture industries and mindless consumerism that inevitably lead to the decline of human subjectivity. Utopia becomes a nightmare; the accompanying fear of inhuman, totalitarian societies where everyone is instrumentally happy was well expressed by A. Huxley in his Brave New World, also A. Burgess’ Mechanical Orange, G. Orwell’s 1984 and other works of literature. Yet in Lithuania, after the collapse of the Soviet system in 1990, the socially constructed utopian vision of the Western world was predominant in both literature and public discourse. “The West” stood as the role model for future development and thus its legacy was hardly questioned. Issues brought to the forefront by some Western critical theorists were not broadly debated in Lithuania. They were, however, invoked and represented by Jurga Ivanauskaitė in the narrative Placebo, in 2003. The fundamental critique of post-industrial consumer society unfolds in this work along lines similar to those of critical theory, touching upon such issues as imperatives of consumption, manipulation of human consciousness, false needs and artificially incited desires. The work highlights new hegemonic forms of domination in a society governed by an unknown rational instrumental force, presumably capital, that offers no possibility of resistance. The book represents a case of belated criticism informed by dramatic experiences: a former utopia, now experienced directly, turns into a disguise.

Editorial Volume 2 Issue 1

Editorial Volume 2 Issue 1

Decolonising Travel in W. H. Hudson's The Purple Land

This essay examines the complex relationship between William Henry Hudson's first novel, The Purple Land (1885), and Victorian travel writing about the Rio de la Plata, the geographical area which at present comprises the territories of Argentina and Uruguay. While the novel relies on many of the conventions, ideas and tropes of contemporary travel writing about the region, it does so only up to a point and with a most telling twist, one which serves to undermine rather than endorse the standard ideological posture of the genre. While Victorian travel writing about the Rio de la Plata is as a rule deeply implicated in the politics and ideology of British expansion, Hudson's own engagement with the genre, far from complicit with its imperial ethos, offers a fundamental critique of it. In that sense, the novel can be said to turn travel literature against itself and narrate a very different, decolonising type of travel.

Setting Asymmetric Dependence Straight

Fodor's asymmetric-dependence theory of content is probably the best known and most developed causal or informational theory of mental content. Many writers have attempted to provide counterexamples to Fodor's theory. In this paper, I offer a more fundamental critique. I begin by attacking Fodor's view of the dialectical situation. Fodor's theory is cast in terms of laws covering the occurrence of an individual thinker's mental symbols. I show that, contrary to Fodor's view, we cannot restrict consideration to hypothetical cases in which his conditions for content are satisfied, but must consider whether the relevant laws exhibit the specified asymmetric-dependence relations in actual cases. My central argument is that the laws that the theory requires do not in fact exhibit the appropriate asymmetric-dependence relations. I show that, in general, part of the mechanism for the crucial, supposedly content-determining law for a mental symbol is not shared by the mechanisms for the other laws covering the occurrence of the same mental symbol. As a result, the former law can be eliminated (by eliminating the non-overlapping part of the mechanism) without eliminating the latter laws. The latter laws do not asymmetrically depend on the former law.

The Requirement of Reasons for Findings of Fact

AbstractIn recent years, various common law jurisdictions have been inclined to impose upon courts an obligation to give reasons for their findings of fact. This trend has not been free of criticism. Alongside those who cite the conventional argument that such an obligation would unduly burden the judicial system, a more fundamental critique has been suggested by Ronald Allen and Gerald Seniuk. Allen and Seniuk claim that the nature of factual reasoning, and the fact that this process is not transparent to the fact finder herself, doom the requirement of reasons to failure.This article attempts to examine the desirability of a requirement of reasons for findings of fact in light of this fundamental critique. I will endeavour to show that while the basic, important insights at the heart of Allen and Seniuk's critique do relate to essential elements of the process of factual reasoning, they leave other aspects of this process enigmatic or problematic. This is the case, in particular, regarding the character of claims on matters of fact put forward by litigating parties. I contend that within these, additional aspects of the reasoning process the requirement of reasons would be beneficial. Consequently, I suggest a rethinking of the scope of the reasons that should be required, and a conceptual reappraisal of the nature of the requirement of reasons on findings of fact: rather than conceive of the process of giving reasons as one in which the fact finder must raise beyond the brink of consciousness the considerations that led her to her decision, we should see this process as one of critical review, employed by the fact finder to constrain the intuitive, subconscious sphere in which initial impressions are conceived.

Transactional Economics: John Dewey's Ways of Knowing and the Radical Subjectivism of the Austrian School

The radical subjectivism of the Austrian school of economics is a special case of Dewey's ways of knowing. Austrian economists adopted an Aristotelian deductive approach to economic issues such as social behavior and exchange. In Dewey's contrasting view, the scientist commends new, alternative ways of knowing to the scientific community, offering more profound insight or more efficacious practical applications. Alternative ways of knowing which do not offer practical or intellectual benefits are to be rejected. Dewey's transactional strategy, asserting knowledge as ways of knowing, suggests a broader and more fundamental critique of the socialist position in the calculation debate. The arguments presented by the Austrian school can be reformulated in terms of Dewey's transactional philosophy.

Executive Compensation: Is Disclosure Enough?

Over the last decade, executive compensation has attracted the attention from corporate governance specialists and the general public. After briefly examining the purposes of executive compensation, this paper focuses on the governance problems posed by remuneration schemes. It considers the limitations of the traditional bargaining by the board approach and the weakness of the traditional means of control by shareholders. It then focuses on disclosure as the main regulatory answer to this problem. Analyzing closely the Swiss regulatory framework, it points out its formal and substantive shortcomings. It also takes a step back and undertakes a more fundamental critique of disclosure as a remedy to inappropriate compensation. It stresses the perverse incentives resulting from a disclosure scheme, ranging from the use of inefficient but opaque forms of remuneration to the ratcheting effect and the norm setting effect of disclosure. To solve these problems and more generally to improve executive compensation, it suggests putting more focus on shareholders through a general meeting vote on compensation policy and explores a few options so that this vote can become an effective check on executive compensation.

Practised intelligence testing based on a modern test conceptualization and its reference to the common intelligence theories

The question is to what extent intelligence test-batteries prove any kind of empirical reference to common intelligence theories. Of particular interest are conceptualized tests that are of a high psychometric standard – those that fit the Rasch model – and hence are not exposed to fundamental critique. As individualized testing, i.e., a psychologist and a testee face to face, is often preferred by many practitioners, a Wechsler-like test-battery will be dealt with here: The Adaptive Intelligence Diagnosticum (AID 2; [Kubinger, K. D. &, Wurst, E. (2000). Adaptives Intelligenz Diagnostikum—Version 2.1(AID 2). [Adaptive intelligence diagnosticum 2.] Weinheim: Beltz.]). Using the standardization sample, confirmatory factor analyses were performed with respect to intelligence theories and models, respectively, as concerns Spearman, Wechsler, Thurstone, Cattell, Jäger, and Carroll. Additionally, a confirmatory factor analysis was performed with respect to a simplified neuropsychological model of specific learning disorders, which proved to fit the data best, even better than the (exploratory) four factor solution as given in the AID 2-manual. This model is based on the three interdependent factors “perception”, “retrieval”, and “utilization”. The answer is that if modern test conceptualizations attempt to fulfill pragmatic purposes they hardly have any relation to pertinent intelligence theories, but rather create their own kind of informal, heuristic model of “intelligence”.

Dismantling Democratic States

Dismantling Democratic States, Ezra Suleiman, Princeton and Oxford, Princeton University Press, 2003, pp. 327.At the heart of this comparative text is a fundamental critique of the substitution of the norms of the market place for those of collective public interest. As citizens are transformed into ubiquitous consumers, so the reinvention of government raises profound questions about the public domain and its role. To this extent, the New Public Management (NPM) is a vehicle for a deeper ideological program, differentiating it from earlier reform endeavours. However, Suleiman contends it is a global movement very much constrained by cultural contexts. The reluctance of countries such as France or Japan to implement far-reaching reforms reflects deeply embedded socio-cultural and political values that underpin the public sphere, unlike prevalent values in the United States.

Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age (review)

Reviewed by: Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age Davis W. Houck Habits of the High-Tech Heart: Living Virtuously in the Information Age. By Quentin J. Schultze. Grand Rapids, Mich.: Baker Books, 2002; pp 256. $24.95 cloth. God forbid if a stranger broke into my Hotmail email account searching for what kind of person I am. Given the types of daily messages I receive, said stranger might plausibly draw at least four conclusions: I'm overly concerned about fluctuating mortgage rates; I have a fetish for cheap ink jet printer cartridges; I have a deep longing to be the second coming of John Holmes sans surgery; and, I have philanthropic financial interests in Nigeria. I have a hunch that similar, if not identical, conclusions might also be drawn about many of my readers—even my female readers. Cyberspace wasn't always this way. In the ten short years that I've been an Internet user, cyberspace has changed dramatically, from text-only features to real-time streamed video. Quentin J. Schultze might also argue that the Internet and information technologies more generally have changed each one of us—and not for the better. A professor of communication at Calvin College, Schultze has written an unusual book; in fact, it's a hard book to categorize. To borrow from the title of a well-known book by the famous theologian Francis A. Schaeffer, perhaps we might subtitle it, "how should we then live?" in the age of the Internet. Schultze believes that most of us are living the wrong way. The Internet plays on some of our worst tendencies: it exacerbates our isolation and insulation; its distance makes us mean; its intimacy is promiscuous when it's not already disingenuous; its promotion of fluid identities functions less as a postmodern utopia and more as anarchic individualism. To borrow from Alexis de [End Page 169] Tocqueville, and Schultze does frequently, cyberspace is driving us from what matters, from the habits of the heart. The habits to which Schultze would have us return are in the past—the ancient past. In the Hebrew and Christian traditions, he argues, will we find our way. No, Schultze wouldn't have us junk our keyboards and scrap our modems in favor of some sort of pretechnological asceticism. Ted Kaczynski he's not. But he is asking us to change our cyberhabits. And thus our lives. I've noted over the several years that I've been in the academy that even a whiff of Christianity often provokes an immediate antifascism alert. Academics, it seems, are nothing if not hypervigilant about issues of authority—and what authorizes that authority. Typically, that translates into a worship of reason. Might we even say a profound faith in reason? And isn't it interesting that even postmodern critique is usually carried out with scrupulous attention to claims, evidences, and warrants? I've also noted something else: academics tend toward a radical individualism. This tendency only makes sense at some level: the sort of work we do usually requires us to be alone in our pursuits and presentations of knowledge. As Schultze reminds us throughout his very well-written book, cyberspace tends to valorize both the rational and the individual in self-reinforcing ways. As such his book offers a fundamental critique of academic life, where we often research online, where we often talk to our students online, and where we increasingly teach online. So while the book's audience is very broad, Schultze forces academics to confront some of their Holy of Holies. Just as there are supposedly no atheists in foxholes, Schultze forces us to wonder: are there any cyberphiles in hospice beds? As best as I can tell, Schultze's critique of cyberculture leads in only one direction: toward the body. Our modes of earthly, and thus Heavenly, salvation are premised on spending less time proselytizing to anonymous databases and ethereal e-mailers, asserts Schultze, and more time caring for and listening to our neighbors. Face-to-face, body-to-body interactions—certainly primary orality—where we can commune with one another rather than cocoon with our monitors can save us...

The Dynamics of African Feminism: Defining and Classifying African Feminist Literatures (review)

Reviewed by: The Dynamics of African Feminism: Defining and Classifying African Feminist Literatures Pia Thielmann The Dynamics of African Feminism: Defining and Classifying African Feminist Literatures By Susan ArndtTrenton, NJ: Africa World P, 2002. 234 pp. ISBN 0-86543-898-6 paper. Foreword by Obioma Nnaemeka. Translation by Isabel Cole of Feminismus im Widerstreit: Afrikanischer Feminismus in Gesellschaft und Literatur. Münster: Unrast Verlag, 2000. 205 pp. ISBN 3-89771-201-6 paper. The first five chapters of Susan Arndt's monograph provide a clear overview of the various terminologies and ideas of African feminisms, such as Molara Ogundipe- Leslie's stiwanism, Catherine Acholonu's motherism, Obioma Nnaemeka's negofeminism, and Mary Kolawole's and Chikwenye Ogunyemi's versions of womanism. Arndt shows how they do, or do not, relate to Western feminist concepts. With African feminists, Arndt criticizes African American feminists for speaking for black women and "women of color" internationally, thus claiming authority over African women with whose conditions and needs they may not be familiar. African feminists, in contrast, address African women's various different situations and needs that are based [End Page 156] on widely accepted but discriminatory conventions. While the term womanism is also used by African scholars, its ideas differ from Alice Walker's womanism in so far as the issue of female homosexuality is not an issue close to African women's heart whereas motherhood is. The author establishes that the only obligatory characteristic that makes for an African-feminist text (Arndt's hyphenation) is the criticism of African gender relations, and points out that this essential component is often combined with optional characteristics that acknowledge that African women—and men—"suffer not only from sexism and patriarchal social structures, but are also victims of racism, neo-colonialism, cultural imperialism, religious fundamentalism, socio-economic mechanisms of oppression and dictatorial and/or corrupt systems" (73). Arndt creates a classification model of reformist, transformative, and radical African-feminist literatures and defines their respective concerns: Reformist feminist texts criticize individual traditional and modern conventions that discriminate against women. They present alternatives that improve women's situations, holding true that improvement within given structures is possible. Men are criticized as individuals, but they can change; thus a happy ending is made possible. Transformative feminist texts offer a fundamental critique of patriarchy. Men's behavior is presented more sharply and as being typical for them as a group. Women's complicity in the reproduction of gender discrimination is also thematized. Both men's and women's reproduction of discriminatory structures is seen as surmountable. Radical texts "argue that men (as a social group) inevitably and in principle discriminate against, oppress and mistreat women. [. . .] A disturbing lack of alternatives and perspectives distinguishes these texts" (85) from reformist and transformative ones. The second part of Dynamics provides a close reading ofselected narratives by African women writers and tests them against Arndt's categories. Grace Ogot's The Graduate, Ifeoma Okoye's Behind the Clouds, and Flora Nwapa's Efuru make up the list of reformist texts. Akachi Adimora-Ezeigbo's "Ubaaku," Mariama Bâ's Une si longue Lettre, Buchi Emecheta's The Joys of Motherhood, and Bessie Head's "The Collector of Treasures" form the group of transformative texts under study. Pat Ngurukie's "Mother of Daughters," Nawal El Saadawi's Women at Point Zero, and Calixthe Beyala's Tu t'appelleras Tanga are interpreted as examples of radical African-feminist texts. While Arndt creates a hierarchy of radicalism, she obviously favors reformative African-feminist texts as the ones with the highest chance of contributing to changes in discriminatory attitudes and practices. Acknowledging the fluidity and overlaps of these categories that may make it difficult to place all African-feminist texts within this roster, she nicely accomplishes her goal of providing a tool "to categorize a literary work as feminist or nonfeminist on the basis of clearly comprehensible criteria" (23). Thus, her work is a perfect textbook about African women's literature. My students love it. Copyright © 2005 The Indiana University Press

Human Security - Conflict, Critique and Consensus: Colloquium Remarks and a Proposal for a Threshold-Based Definition

The aim of the colloquium in this issue of Security Dialogue was to both summarize and advance the rich but scattered literature on human security. The result is a microcosm of the ten-year academic debate, told through the condensed perspectives of many of the people who shaped it. This article first summarizes the 21 thoughtful and innovative commentaries, and identifies three principle themes: the theoretical broad-versus-narrow debate, human security’s practical utility, and the fundamental critique and defense of the concept. Then, it is proposed that a threshold-based conceptualization, one rooted in the original UNDP definition, offers a conciliatory way forward to what is often characterized as a fractured debate. It is suggested that limiting threat inclusion by severity, rather than by cause, bridges the divide between the broad and narrow proponents, addresses the many critiques of the concept, and provides a clear policy agenda operating on various scales.

Towards a ‘global educational justice’ research paradigm: cognitive justice, decolonizing methodologies and critical pedagogy

This article challenges three predominant narratives on educational globalization—‘educational restructuring,’ ‘educational institutionalism,’ and ‘educational multilateralism’—and shows how they have largely failed to propose alternatives to the neoliberal order. I connect two disparate literatures—on educational globalization and anti‐globalization social movements—to argue that the alternative globalization movement performs global citizenship education through critical pedagogy, cognitive justice, and decolonizing methodologies. To arrive at a multi‐layered model of citizenship, what is needed is not only critical pedagogy, but a fundamental critique of the cognitive injustice inherent within the hegemonic neoliberal ideology by re‐asserting the diversity of value systems and restoring subjugated knowledges through alternative methodologies. Drawing upon my participant observation at the 2003 anti‐G8 Summit in France and anti‐World Trade Organization meeting in Mexico, as well as the fourth World Social Forum in India, I propose a new research program on global educational justice.

Subjectivity as Philosophical Principle

This paper wishes to establish some connections with the intentions that have informed the project of the philosophy of the subject. This project has especially been represented by the work of Fichte, although today it is important to make it relevant to contemporary philosophical problems and issues. A renewed philosophy of the subject must not risk being exposed to the fundamental critique, so eloquently formulated by Heidegger, that, like Fichte's work, it can begin once again from the conviction that we can lead a human life only on the basis of acts of the universal objectification of everything there is and on the basis of an act of self-empowerment. This paper proposes that a renewed philosophy of the subject has to try to bring itself into harmony with our experience and awareness of human limitations and ambivalence.

Rediscovering the Theological in Sociology

Is sociology inherently a mode of secular materialism? Or, are there intellectual resources deep within the sociological tradition, expansively conceived, that offer the sociological imagination a spiritual `post-secular' perspective on society and culture? This article draws out the subterranean theological stream of sociological consciousness and illuminates a `sacramentalist' socio-theology with particular reference to the `iconic vision' of Paul Evdokimov. In the context of late modernity, such a radical emphasis on the sacred foundations and transcendent potentialities of life provides the possibility of a fundamental critique of commodified profane culture and of sociology itself.

The World Monetary System and External Relations of the EMU - Fasten Your Safety Belts!

Traditionally clustered around one leading hegemonic world currency, with the introduction of the euro the international monetary regime might become a dipolar This fundamental change would come at a time of already considerable uncertainty when, after the Asian, Russian and Latin American financial crises caused general dismay, the major institutional framework is in a constant reform process as the G7 are considering a new financial architecture and the IMF is facing fundamental critique. At the same time, the legal position of the ECOFIN and the ECB in the international field in the international monetary organizations is not yet clear. This article tries to point out some concrete areas of diversity of interest in the international consequences of the introduction of the Euro and analyzes the costs and gains from cooperation in different ways of dealing with these conflicts. From the structure of the issues some conclusions on the challenges facing the institutions can be drawn and some speculation as to the appropriate distribution of competences may be possible. Thus, I try to give an overview of the legal issues surrounding the representation of the EMU in the international monetary institutions in the light of a functional analysis of the challenges created by a transformation of a hegemonic monetary system to a symmetric dipolar system.