Cordon Sanitaire Research Articles

Cordon Sanitaire, and: Fabric, and: Detention and Multiplication, and: Our waiter wasn't wounded

Cordon Sanitaire, and: Fabric, and: Detention and Multiplication, and: Our waiter wasn't wounded

REGIONAL GEOPOLITICAL PROJECT “INTERMARIUM”: PERSPECTIVES OF REALIZATION

The emergence of geopolitical projects of association of the countries in the “Intermarium” dates back to the period after the First World War. In the era of the Cold War, some countries of the Baltic-Black Sea region were part of the Soviet Union, while others were Soviet satellites. Expansion of NATO and EU toward the East in post-bipolar period has resulted in strengthening of the position of the West in Central and Eastern Europe. Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia have turned into an outpost of the West on the border with Russia. Implementation of the “Eastern Partnership” project leads to increased infl uence of the EU in Ukraine and Moldova. Possible geoeconomic integration within the “Intermarium” is to be of low effi ciency. Belarus has a key strategic position in the region and is an ally of Russia. Potential threats that are emanate from the geopolitics of Russia in Eastern Europe, encourages countries of the Baltic-Black Sea region to develop new geopolitical projects in creating of defensive militarypolitical association. Contemporary neo-imperial geopolitics of the US in Europe is aimed at strengthening of its infl uence and provides, in particular, the support to projects of regional interstate associations, designed to “containment” of Russia. For the countries of the Western Europe geopolitical projects of integration associations in the Baltic-Black Sea region can be designed to form a “cordon sanitaire” for the isolation of Russia Ukraine is a most interested country in the implementation of the military-political project “Intermarium”. The potential militarypolitical association «Intermarium» will be fully functioned only under condition of preservation of the confrontation between the West and Russia.

John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner by R. Bruce Stephenson

Reviewed by: John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner by R. Bruce Stephenson Todd M. Michney John Nolen, Landscape Architect and City Planner. By R. Bruce Stephenson. (Amherst and Boston: University of Massachusetts Press, 2015. Pp. xii, 294. $39.95, ISBN 978-1-62534-079-5.) In this deeply researched and richly detailed biography of John Nolen (1869–1937), among the first to list his profession as “city planner,” R. Bruce Stephenson focuses attention on a figure who has been curiously understudied and who arguably deserves additional scrutiny on several topics—from his ideas about race and class to his proto-environmentalism, all key interests among Progressive reformers. Described as a “pragmatic visionary,” Nolen, in his signal contribution, translated garden city principles that originated in Great Britain for American audiences (p. 4). Nolen was previously examined in a 2011 article by Robert Freestone as a transitional figure bridging the City Beautiful and City Practical movements (“Reconciling Beauty and Utility in Early City Planning: The Contribution of John Nolen,” Journal of Urban History, 37 [March 2011], 256–77), but otherwise Nolen has mainly garnered attention in case studies of selected projects. One of the few other monographs to date is Jody Beck’s John Nolen and the Metropolitan Landscape (London, 2013), a much shorter study that Stephenson seems to have completely overlooked. Nolen left a successful first career as a promoter of adult education in 1903 to enroll in Harvard’s landscape architecture program, where he studied under Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. Inspiration for this move came from the 1893 World’s Columbian Exposition and what Nolen absorbed on trips to Europe, particularly Germany, which was pioneering land-use regulation at the time. Nolen received his first commission before even completing his graduate training, and ultimately he was credited with drawing up hundreds of plans. However, his efforts to convince profit-minded developers and penny-pinching city officials to implement his elegantly organic designs typically came to naught; Stephenson’s assessment that prior to the 1920s “only about a quarter of Nolen’s city and town plans were adopted” seems overly generous (p. 158). Apart from several well-received parks and subdivisions, practically all of Nolen’s most time-consuming projects were either dramatically scaled back (Madison, Wisconsin) or ultimately rejected (San Diego; St. Petersburg, Florida). Mariemont, Ohio (a Cincinnati suburb) was Nolen’s most successful achievement, being entirely underwritten by a wealthy patron. World War I delivered new opportunities, but Florida’s land bust and the coming of the Great Depression essentially destroyed his business; thereafter, a shift toward more “scientific” planning and modernist design, not to mention his own premature death, denied Nolen the chance to fully participate in the New Deal planning revival. Despite various setbacks, Nolen was extremely well connected in the field and published prolifically, contributing to the professionalization of city planning. [End Page 961] Historians of the South will find much material of interest here, considering Nolen’s active involvement in Charlotte, North Carolina; Roanoke, Virginia; Kingsport, Tennessee; and numerous Florida cities and towns. However, Stephenson does not go nearly far enough in exploring Nolen’s views on formalized racial segregation. Throughout, the approach is to give Nolen the benefit of the doubt, emphasizing his discomfort with blatant white supremacy and highlighting his several direct encounters with African Americans—Nolen drew up a Tuskegee Institute plan, for example—while postulating that his disadvantaged childhood made him empathetic. While Stephenson does scrutinize Nolen’s occasional inclusion of segregated black settlements—most strikingly in Venice, Florida, surrounded by a cordon sanitaire of white-owned farms—he asserts these were accommodations to southern racial custom. In fact, as Jody Beck notes, on a number of occasions (and as early as 1912) Nolen personally advocated racial segregation as beneficial for African Americans. While noting race-based deed restrictions in Belleair, Florida, Stephenson neglects to mention these were also applied to Myers Park in Charlotte, as well as to Mariemont (underlining that de jure segregation was not limited to the South in this period). While representing a welcome contribution to the field, there is clearly more to be explored in John Nolen’s contributions to the field of early city...

Religious Discourse and Radical Right Politics in Contemporary Greece, 2010–2014

Building on the ‘pathological normalcy’ thesis, the paper aims at exploring the ideological relationship between the ‘institutional’ Greek Church and the neo-Nazi ‘Golden Dawn’ party. To this end, the paper seeks to examine two interconnected themes: (1) the religious political discourse as a factor for the party's growth; and (2) the significance of the religious value system within the party's ideological structure. The method of analysis employed is the Essex School discourse theory paradigm. Overall, the paper argues that (1) the Church has not substantially contributed to the establishment of a ‘cordon sanitaire' against the Golden Dawn; (2) the political theology of the Greek Church, as well as the discourse of its former archbishop Christodoulos, have operated as the breeding-ground for the social legitimization of the party ideology; and (3) Golden Dawn has instrumentalized religion as a marker of national identity and an exclusion criterion.

‘Our own Hurricane Katrina’: Aboriginal disadvantage and Australian national identity

Since Prime Minister Howard's declaration in 2007 that child sex abuse in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities was Australia's ‘own Hurricane Katrina’, the trope of natural disaster has been a regular feature of print and television media coverage of Indigenous affairs in Australia. The effect of this rhetorical strategy is to separate what happens to Aboriginal people from the fabric of ‘mainstream’ Australian cultural and political life; to render it alien and unconnected to the relative privilege enjoyed by other Australians. This strategy also produces peculiar temporal effects by erecting a cordon sanitaire around Australian history and the national identity that it supports. Howard's comparison of Aboriginal disadvantage with Katrina, if read alongside his politicization of the teaching of Australian history, demonstrates an unwillingness to incorporate systemic injustice toward Indigenous people within the composition of that history. This article interrogates the relationships between the manifold understandings of Aboriginal disadvantage and attempts to commemorate its violent history, as these aspects of Australian life are both integrated and refused by national identity narratives. Specifically, the paper reinterprets the trope of natural disaster as a means of comprehending Indigenous disadvantage and Australian identity by drawing on Walter Benjamin's philosophy of history. Benjamin's understanding of activism as a constructive retrieval of the past will be developed to reconnect catastrophe to history, and to enable an exploration of responsibility for that history as an integral condition of contemporary Australian identity.

Enfermedad y daño. Etiología y tratamiento de la viruela entre las sociedades nativas de Araucanía (fines del siglo XVIII)

In the year of 1791, a smallpox epidemic which affected the Indian populations of the Arauco frontier –south of Bio-Bio river in Chile– worried the colonial authorities of Concepcion, due to the fear that the Spanish inhabitants of that region could also get infected. Acting according to the contagion paradigm, they imposed a cordon sanitaire in order to isolate them from the Natives, and suggested these do the same. Also, conscious that the plague was commonly attributed to Spanish witchcraft, they hurried to offer medicine and medical advice, in order to show there was no will to cause damage. The responses of the different Indian groups demonstrated the co-existence of a wide variety of perspectives regarding the etiology of smallpox and the possible paths of action: from a personalist conception which attributed it to witches’ activities, to the admission of their own inability to find proper treatment, which led to the acceptance of Spanish medicines. The general picture shows a native model of the illness that is both conservative and innovative, complex and dynamic at the same time. The description of those events, found in a folder which was later sent to Spain, and the references contained in other colonial documents, allow the examination of the epidemiologic event using as a comparative context the conceptualizations now current among the Mapuche. They also allow the analysis of dominant conceptions concerning illness among the Spaniards in the late eighteenth century.

Changing direction: Defensive planning in a post-conflict city

This paper considers a number of recently declassified documents from the 1970s and 1980s to show that the security agencies in Northern Ireland played a key role in shaping the redevelopment of the city of Belfast, which extends some way beyond that which had hitherto been considered to be the case. With the aim of creating a cordon sanitaire around the main areas of conflict, the planning system was successfully harnessed to achieve the key military objective of spatially isolating major areas of the north and west of the city. In this respect, the planning system very successfully achieved the objectives that were set for it by the security agencies. However, the legacy of this approach is that there are now large sections of the city isolated from the economic and social mainstream of post-conflict Belfast. This paper argues that what is now required is a reconfiguration of the planning system within the city, embracing the notion of reflexive regulatory aspects of equality law, which can ensure that the planning system within the city is steered in a different direction from one based on exclusion and segregation, to one that embraces cohesion and integration. Only when this is achieved it is argued, can the objectives of the 1998 peace agreement be realised.

Pariahs or Partners? Inclusion and Exclusion of Radical Right Parties and the Effects on Their Policy Positions

This article investigates the effects of inclusion and exclusion on the policy agendas of radical right parties. Radical right parties face diverging political opportunity structures in Western Europe. In some countries, the prospect of office has become a realistic option since the beginning of this century; in other countries radical right parties remain ostracised by mainstream parties. Research has focused mainly on the electoral effects of inclusion and exclusion strategies. Systematic analyses of the effects on policy agendas are scarce. This article focuses on the policy positions of radical right parties with respect to the key issues of immigration and integration. The finding is that ostracised parties have not changed much over time, but there is no evidence that cordons sanitaires have a freezing effect. Contrary to expectations, non-ostracised parties have not become more moderate over time. After the turn of the millennium, non-ostracised radical right parties have become just as radical as their ostracised cousins.

Voters' Perceptions of Policy Convergence and the Short‐term Opportunities of Anti‐immigrant Parties: Examples from Sweden

In contrast to previous studies on the political opportunity structures of anti‐immigrant parties, this article argues that voters’ perceptions of policy convergence between mainstream alternatives affect their short‐term propensity for supporting such partisan challengers. Drawing upon leading research in the field, two hypotheses about voters’ perceptions of policy convergence, in two policy areas (economic redistribution and immigration), are presented. The main findings in the article suggest that policy convergence between mainstream parties has a more immediate impact on the electorate than commonly recognised. Using unique data from Sweden, the article shows that perceived convergence between Swedish mainstream parties in the field of immigration policy increases potential support for the anti‐immigrant party, the Sweden Democrats (SD). Yet the results are the opposite when it comes to perceptions of convergence in the field of economic‐distributive policies. In contrast to widespread assumptions, the article thus finds that policy convergence between mainstream parties only appears to create short‐term opportunities for anti‐immigrant parties if it takes place on their own policy turf. These results indicate, in other words, that the potential electorate of the SD – which is a wider group than hard‐core xenophobes – is largely driven by preferences about immigration policy, rather than the short‐term urge to protest against mainstream parties. The article, therefore, concludes that the cordon sanitaire to isolate the SD in Sweden – which is underpinned by de facto convergence between mainstream parties on immigration policy – could improve, and is unlikely to curb, the short‐term electoral opportunities of this party.

Surrounding the Void: Samuel Beckett and Spain

ESTRAGON: I'm going. VLADIMIR: Help me up first. Then we'll go together. ESTRAGON: You promise? VLADIMIR: I swear it! ESTRAGON: And we'll never come back? VLADIMIR: Never! ESTRAGON: We'll go to the Pyrenees. VLADIMIR: Wherever you like. I've always wanted to wander in the Pyrenees. VLADIMIR: You'll wander in them. (Samuel Beckett. Waiting for Godot) 1.- Introduction Samuel Beckett never went to Spain. At least

Far-left political parties, their origin, ideological positioning and place in the Czech Republic’s party system (1990–2015): the case of the communist party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM)

The article is dedicated to analyzing the features of far-left political parties in the Czech Republic in 1990–2015. In particular, the paper focuses on the main among them, i.e. the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia (KSČM). The author reviewed the history and origin of far-left political parties in the Czech Republic, outlined the parameters of their ideological positioning and ideolog- ical peculiarities of the Czech left extremism. As a result, it was proved that the extreme left-wing political parties in the Czech Republic are unreformed one and are used to reflect the most classical principles of Marxism-Leninism, though they have become relevant within the whole history of the Czech Republic. The researcher argued that the relevance of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia as a key far-left party in the Czech Republic is outlined with its parliamentary representation, but simultaneously is determined with non-participation of the party in the government formation, especially due to the use of the measures of political isolation (technique of “cordon sanitaire”).

Robert Thomas Crucefix, Redux

Robert Thomas Crucefix (1788-1850) was a charismatic and polarizing figure in English freemasonry through the 1830s until his death. He is best remembered for founding the Freemasons’ Quarterly Review and as the primary force behind the establishment of the Asylum for Worthy, Aged and Decayed Freemasons. He was not only an active Craft mason and Junior Grand Deacon in the Grand Lodge, but he also joined, and often dominated, other degrees and orders in England, Scotland, Ireland, France and the United States. Though there has been no proper biography of Crucefix, much has been written about his masonic activities, and especially about his ongoing confrontations with the Duke of Sussex, who served as Grand Master for much of the time Crucefix was a freemason. His private life has been virtually ignored, and this is especially true for his medical career, around which a cordon sanitaire seems to have been thrown, fending off inquiry. This study is a preliminary foray beyond that boundary, exploring both Crucefix’s medical career and its broader implications.

Surveillance of foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) in susceptible wildlife and domestic ungulates in Southeast of Bulgaria following a FMD case in wild boar

Following a foot-and-mouth disease (FMD) case of serotype O in wild boar in Southeast of Bulgaria, notified in January 2011 and eleven FMD outbreaks in livestock, a control and eradication plan according to the EU legislation was implemented. Based on the epidemiological considerations a "Cordon Sanitaire" along the border to Turkey, consisting of a defined infected area (1240 km(2)) and two areas of risk (2160 km(2)) was established. Within these areas a total of 812 wild boar, 68 roe deer, 7 red deer and 2 mouflons, hunted between February 2011 and January 2012, were tested for the presence of FMD. No FMD virus could be detected. Seropositive animals were found in wild boar (6.9%) and roe deer (4.4%), most of them spatially clustered around the FMD outbreaks in livestock, limited within a radius of 20 km. The outbreaks in domestic ungulates were controlled in the framework of EU legislation, including stamping out, standstill and no use of vaccination. All villages within the Cordon Sanitaire were examined for the presence of FMD according to the control and eradication plan. Neither clinical signs nor seroconversion was detected and the region could regain its status of FMD freedom without vaccination. The relatively low seroprevalence and clustered spatial distribution of seropositive wild boar and roe deer suggest that the FMD infection in wildlife was mainly a short living event, which failed to develop into a large scale epidemic.

RETHINKING THE BLACK SEA: BETWEEN THE TRANS-ATLANTIC AND THE EURASIAN PROJECTS

The Black Sea region as a buffer between great powers and cordon sanitaire was and still is important in European history. After the 18th century, the Russian empire began a gradual but unstoppable move towards the conquest of the region, leading to a setback for Turkish influence. The Crimean War enabled Western powers to contain Russian expansion for some decades. For small and medium-sized countries like Romania, it is difficult to erase historic experiences from their collective memory. During the Cold War, the Black Sea was a virtual “Soviet lake” from a military point of view. The West controlled only the straits “owned” by Turkey following the Montreux Convention. After the implosion of the USSR, this strategic area was neglected by the Western powers and viewed by the Russian Federation as a traditional sphere of influence. Since 1991, Ukraine holds about 30% of the northern shore of the Black Sea, Georgia controls roughly 12% of the maritime littoral (including the separatist territories) while Russia owns about 13% of the Black Sea shores. Turkey and Ukraine hold the biggest share of the Black Sea shore. Generally speaking, during the two last decades, there have been two competing visions about the future: the Euro-Atlantic one, which insists on opening and internationalising the sea, and the Eurasian vision, which wants the Black Sea to remain closed and impenetrable to foreign interferences. This article deals with these issues.doi: 10.5787/41-1-1051

Het cordon sanitaire gewikt en gewogen: burgers tussen instrumentele pragmatiek en democratische principes

How should political parties deal with extremist parties? In the Netherlands an accommodating approach to Wilders prevails, while in Flanders political actors pursue a much more repressive approach against Vlaams Belang. Although the democratic coalition against the extreme right in Flanders is maintained, the effectiveness and legitimacy of the exclusion politics is regularly under discus¬ sion. Mostly, the political or normative debate is at the forefront, while there is little data about public opinion. In this article we try to determine how Flemish citizens think about the cordon sanitaire using the results of in-depth interviews. The results show that public opinion is based on pragmatism, strategy and prin¬ ciples. The pragmatic vision depends on citizen’s definition of the party and citizen’s assessment of the risks associated with the participation to government, while principled arguments are dependent of the fundamental meaning of de¬ mocracy.

Political extremism in democracies: combating intolerance

Pariahs in their Midst: Organized Extremism and the Problem of Tolerance in Contemporary Democracies Ignore, Isolate, Co-Opt, Collaborate or Ban? Mapping Strategic Responses to Pariah Parties Determinants of Democratic Defensiveness Is the Cordon Sanitaire Effective? The Moderating Effects of Incumbency? Responding to Political Extremism Without Succumbing to It Ban the Bans, but Guard the Threshold? 'Lessons' from Old to New Democracies

Book review: Imperialism, by J. A. Hobson

J. A. Hobson Imperialism, Spokesman: Nottingham, 2011,334 pp: 9780851247885, 19.99 [pounds sterling] (pbk) J. A. Hobson's Imperialism was first published in 1902, at the peak of British imperialism, when imperial expansions fostered national imagination and pro-imperial propaganda blinded many citizens both in England and overseas. J. A. Hobson deals with imperialism in the way Marx dealt with capitalism: he unveils its financial instruments, political mechanisms and ideological arrangements. The study consists of two parts--the economic basis and the ideological basis of imperialism. The division represents somehow the Marxist dichotomy of base and superstructure, with the first comprehending the forces and relations of production, and the latter referring to derivative products of economic life as culture, science, ideology, etc. The first part, 'Economics of Imperialism', illuminates the drives for imperialism and also the financial and political mechanisms of imperialism. The author makes a distinction between colonialism and imperialism, and this distinction is crucial for understanding his work. 'For convenience, the year 1870 has been taken as indicative of the beginning of a conscious policy of imperialism' (p. 57). What is the dividing line, the political cordon sanitaire between colonialism and imperialism? The author argues that traditional colonialism was the outlet of surplus population. It led to new permanent colonial settlements in the overseas territories, mostly territories with favourable climate conditions and low local population. To protect British people overseas, British rule was also established there. Imperialism, Hobson points out, means political annexation with colonial settlements. Imperial domination is defined as the targeting of populated areas with a temporary corpus of navy, diplomats, military, clerical and administrative staff, instead of permanent colonies. Hobson argues that imperialism is masked by the old ideas of colonialism--the excess of population and productive powers--yet these ideas veil the complex financial and political mechanisms of new imperialist developments. The first myth is the myth of overproduction. As imperial mythologies imply, overproduction derives from efficient labour, productive technologies and the racial superiority of the British population. This is, according to Hobson, one of the ill-recognised economic truths. Commodities produced within a country cannot be consumed within the country, because some people are underpaid, and some others accumulate financial means far beyond their needs and demands. The resultant overproduction comes from 'Mal-distribution of consuming power which prevents the absorption of commodities and capital within the country' (p. 107). Elites accumulate financial means far beyond their demands; foreign territories are needed not for surplus population, but for reinvestment of surplus capital, accumulated via mal-distribution. So the second myth is the myth of overpopulation. It is not colonial settlers but private financial investments that have to be protected by British rule in overseas territories (p. …

Eastern borderlands as ‘cordon sanitaire’: Romanian and Polish frontiers in interwar geopolitics

STRESZCZENIEAutor wskazuje, iż ogłoszenie 16 lutego 1918 r. w Tarybie niepodległości Litwy nie wywarło większego wrażenia na kołach dyplomatycznych Rumunii. Trwała jeszcze wojna, a król, parlament oraz rząd rumuński znajdowali się w Jassach. Stąd zarówno król, jak i premier Marghiloman dostrzegali rozwój rewolucji bolszewickiej, ale też w marcu tego roku żołnierze rumuńscy weszli do Besarabii, która złożyła deklarację połączenia się z Rumunią. Na przełomie lat 1918 i 1919 elity polityczne Bukaresztu podjęły próbę budowy „kordonu sanitarnego” pomiędzy Bałtykiem a Morzem Czarnym. Realizując ten plan, mimo pewnego oporu Polski, Rumunia 24 sierpnia 1924 r. uznała oficjalnie Litwę. W czasie polsko-rumuńskich rozmów dyplomatycznych strona rumuńska twierdziła, że Litwa właśnie powinna być wspólnym sojusznikiem Polski i Rumunii w konstruowaniu owego kordonu, zamykającego drogę ekspansji Rosji Radzieckiej. Wynikało to m.in. z faktu, iż nie znaleziono perspektyw do nawiązania stosunków pomiędzy Bukaresztem a Kownem. Dyplomaci, politycy, elity kulturalne jakby obawiały się przełamania barier pomiędzy obydwoma krajami i narodami.

Market Access in Switzerland and in the European Union for Agricultural Products from Least Developed Countries

The introduction of the so-called “duty free quota free” treatment (DFQF) for all products from least developed countries (LDCs), in particular by the European Communities (EC) and by Switzerland, raised expectations of increased agricultural exports for these 49 countries. Despite the high tariff differential LDCs now enjoy over their competitors, especially for agricultural products and particularly in Switzerland, the results until 2007 are dismal: with the exception of sugar exports to the EC, LDCs have not been able to substantially increase their agricultural exports to Europe. This study analyses the result-ing tariff situation and the remaining non-tariff barriers. In many instances it is not cus-toms duties but the sanitary and phytosanitary barriers which turn out to be the single most important hurdle preventing trade. For instance, almost no LDC-based company can supply animal-based products. Similarly, certain private standards set by proces-sors and retailers prevent imports, particularly from LDCs, far more effectively than tar-iffs. Several gateways into this “European cordon sanitaire” are proposed. Only if offered in the context of a package of various carefully coordinated measures, DFQF could yet have a real impact on trade from LDCs. As it stands, this treatment constitutes only a nice-to-have but still largely ineffective instrument of trade development.

The unforeseen consequences of cultural resistance: Haskalah and state-mandated reform in the Bohemian lands

This article seeks to interrogate the nature of Jewish cultural transformation in the Bohemian lands in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries. What constellation of factors – involving absolutist intentions and reforms, the political culture of the imperial bureaucracy, rabbinic culture and institutions, and urban Jewish practices and aspirations – combined to produce a distinctively ‘Bohemian’ Haskalah? And how did conservative Jewish leaders express resistance to new patterns of behaviour and thought – and with what results? Prague and the Bohemian lands provide a kind of historical laboratory in which to observe both the power and the limits of traditional Jewish authority and of conservative responses to transformative change. Prague’s was not the reactionary conservatism of Hatam Sofer’s Hungary; its resistance operated, rather, as a succession of brakes on the pace and extent of change, an effort to maintain a strict separation between educational streams without standing in the way of state-mandated progress, an endeavour to marry Jewish Enlightenment to halakhic observance and respect for rabbinic authority. Ultimately, however, the conservative Jewish leadership was powerless to prevent far-reaching social change and significant transformations in the cultural tastes of Bohemian and Moravian Jewry. And its efforts to lay down a cordon sanitaire separating Jewish learning from secular education could not be long maintained.