Russia´s Economy and Society Face New Challenges

The end of the Soviet era brought about fundamental changes in Russia’s economy and its conditions. The transformation from a command to a market economy was painful and caused numerous derivative problems. Privatization paved the way for the oligarchs, who were able to accumulate immense riches due to their connections with politicians and secret-service officials. The old structures in the country’s economic life dissolved but were not replaced.

The Journey to the Promised Land. Mexican Migration Movements

The Mexicans’ relationship with their American neighbours is ambivalent, for they feel overshadowed as well as attracted by them. There is no other place in the world where the stream of migrants of one nation towards the other is bigger. Every year, more than 400,000 Mexicans seek to reach the Promised Land in the north. The figures speak for themselves: 98.7 percent of Mexican expatriates live in the US. One in three foreigners in the US is a Mexican. The remesas, the money migrants transfer back to their relatives in their home country, are Mexico’s second most important source of income, right after oil revenues.

Abkhazia and South Ossetia – Russia’s Intervention in Georgia (August 2008)

Georgia’s government risked war with Russia. By this, Mikheil Saakashvili intended to make the global public, particularly the European Union (EU) and NATO, aware of the unresolved secession conflicts in South Ossetia and Abkhazia. His manoeuvre would have been successful if Georgia had brought about a withdrawal of Russia’s troops from the conflict zones. Conversely, Russia was very well prepared for the challenge of a military conflict with Georgia.

Angola´s Parliamentary Elections in 2008

A Country on its Way to One-Party Democracy

On September 5, 2008, Angola’s citizens went to the polls for the first time in 16 years to elect a new parliament, attentively observed by the international community. Both local and foreign observers were highly sceptical, for there is hardly any tradition of democracy in this country which is still profoundly marked by the civil war that ended in 2002, having lasted all of 27 years.

Editorial

Ausgabe 10/2008 der Auslandsinformationen der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

From the 2005 Paris Declaration to the 2008 High Level Forum

The third High Level Forum (HLF3) on Aid Effectiveness initiated by the OECD was held in Accra, the capital of Ghana, early in September 2008, its objective being to assess the progress made so far in implementing the Paris Declaration of 2005 as well as to adopt a separate plan of action, the Accra Agenda for Action (AAA), to determine what should be done in the future.

Results of the Accra Summit on the Efficiency of Development Cooperation

’Politics Putting its Oar in’

The result of the third High Level Forum on Aid Effectiveness in Accra, the capital of Ghana, was anything but a lasting breakthrough in development cooperation. However, the agreement to assign more responsibility to the developing countries, to render assistance more transparent and interactive, to emphasize the concept of partnership, and to fight corruption together may be regarded as a substantial step that was achieved not least thanks to the consensus among the Europeans.

The Parliamentary Elections in Canada on October 14

On October 14, Canada elected its next parliament or, to be more precise, the 308-seat House of Commons in which prime minister Stephen Harper of the Conservative Party had been leading a minority government until then. Next to the ruling party, the elections were contested by the key opposition force, the Liberal Party of Canada led by Stéphane Dion, the New Democratic Party of Canada with Jack Layton at the helm, the Bloc Québécois headed by Gilles Duceppe, and the Green Party of Canada chaired by Elizabeth May.

Editorial

Ausgabe 8-9/2008 der Auslandsinformationen der Konrad-Adenauer-Stiftung

Networking Cities, Communities, and Regions in the Mediterranean Area

Optionen und Perspektiven für die grenzüberschreitende Zusammenarbeit im Rahmen der EU-Nachbarschaftspolitik

As a new field of EU policy, the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) is a part and a result of a reorganization of the Union’s political institutions, which had its beginnings in diverse insights: with its enlargement, the EU severed economic and cultural areas that had developed until then, creating new fault lines. The prosperity gap and the resultant conflict and migration potential along the external borders of the Union have increased. The hot spots in the Mediterranean and Black Sea region have moved closer. The demands on an EU foreign policy which needs to be renovated have expanded. And finally – given these developments, the Union’s accession policy needs to be revised.