Working with China to Promote Democracy
China represents an uncomfortable thorn in U.S. efforts to promote democracy around the world. While some projects have been successful, a large gap exists between the increasing U.S. funding in China and its "limited impact." Moreover, U.S. democracy promotion in China has contributed to strategic distrust between China and the United States; Beijing perceives it as a strategic move to destabilize the rise of China and sabotage the Communist Party's leadership. At the same time, China's growing power while maintaining one-party rule and rejecting democratic change generates fear and distrust among many Americans.
Deferring Democracy: Promoting Openness in Authoritarian Regimes
The democratic surge in the past twenty years has led many Americans to assume that all societies are, or should be, making progress toward becoming practicing democracies. Many in the United States approach countries such as China, Iran, and Vietnam with impatience and bewilderment. These seemingly intransigent holdouts are the subject of intense policy debates, not in the least because they also play important roles in U.S. security and economic policy. This book takes a fresh look at the prospects for political change in these countries and argues that immediate opportunities exist to advance political liberalization, with the possibility that democratization will follow in the mid to long term. But to encourage these trends, the United States must de-emphasize short-term human rights and democracy strategies to focus on more subtle attitudinal and institutional changes in both state and society, and develop new policy measures to enlarge political space.
Mandating Identity: Citizenship, Kinship Laws and Plural Nationality in the European Union
For over a century it has been the case that a person exists, at least for legal purposes, only after she has been recognized by the state. As a unique element of this acknowledgement, nationality has also been an essential component of individual identity. Now, under pressure from a variety of directions, the nature of the link between state and individual is changing, with as yet unclear implications and long-term effects. In this original and insightful analysis, Eniko Horvath focuses on three processes of legal evolution in Europe that affect the meaning of membership and individual identity: the increasing salience of supranational culture and rights; kinship; legislation privileging non-nationals with linguistic, cultural, and ethnic ties to a given state; and the emergence of plural nationality as an acceptable (and even welcome) phenomenon.The author's treatment is notable for its informed appreciation of both the content of relevant European and national laws and the ways in which these laws are embedded in particular social and political frameworks. In addition to extending the legal theory on citizenship and nationality, the analysis draws on sociology, social psychology, and political theory to anchor its insights and recommendations. After two in-depth chapters introducing the complexities of the subject matter, three distinct but interwoven chapters show how each of the three processes has unfolded in a given context, offer detailed explanations and suggestions as to why each development has occurred in the manner that it has, and discuss the legal, political, and sociological issues raised by the particular development.A comprehensive reference section with extensive lists of laws, cases, and scholarship concludes the volume. It is likely that this book will come to be recognized as a foundational work in the legal analysis of the concept of cultural identity, and especially its role in setting norms of membership, as that way of seeing the world becomes ever more clearly defined in coming decades. It is sure to be not only studied and cited by academics and legal theorists, but of special value also to policymakers in the areas of nationality and citizenship.