Is Europe "elderly and haggard", and could France become "the crucible of  Europe" (Jan. 10, 2015 NYTimes op-ed)?

On the one hand, Europe is warned by the US about an Asian "pivot", and is perceived here as less relevant and effective. Significantly, certainly as a wake up call, Pope Francis recently compared Europe to  a "grandmother, no longer fertile and vibrant, increasingly a bystander in a world that has apparently become less and less Eurocentric”. France had been previously presented here as an eminent representative of an "Old Europe".

On the other hand,  the US has been constantly, during the last decade, advocating for a stronger Europe  and stressing a special French role in this endeavour. A few days ago, after the terrorist attacks in Paris, President Obama publicly stated that "France was the US oldest Ally". 

At a time when we have to face common challenges in the Middle East and in Africa, to adapt to new emerged actors and a more assertive Russia, to deal with direct threats including in the field of proliferation and the cyber space, to define a multipolar world and organize our economic relation (TTIP), what can be the EU contribution? What can also be a special intellectual and diplomatic French input to this global realignment?

Co-sponsored by The Europe Center, the Center for International Security and Cooperation and the France-Stanford Center.

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Ambassador Eric Lebédel is a French diplomat, former ambassador to the OSCE and to Finland, with a deep experience in Transatlantic relationship (twice as Minister's advisor;  in the French embassy in Washington DC) and in European affairs. He is also involved in crisis management (PMs office), international security (embassy in Moscow, consul general in Istanbul) and multilateral diplomacy ( NATO's Director for crisis management, OSCE). Presently working on Strategic Partnerships for the French MFA and interested in e.diplomacy, he also regularly lectures  at Sciences-po and ENA (Ecole Nationale d'Administration) on crisis management and Europe.

Abstract:

Authoritarian ruling parties are expected to resist democratization, often times at all costs. And yet some of the strongest authoritarian parties in the world have not resisted democratization, but have instead embraced it. This is because their raison d’etre is to continue ruling, though not necessarily to remain authoritarian. Put another way, democratization requires ruling parties hold free and fair elections, but not that they lose them. Authoritarian ruling parties can thus be incentivized to concede democratization from a position of exceptional strength. This alternative pathway to democracy is illustrated with Asian cases – notably Taiwan – in which ruling parties democratized from positions of considerable strength, and not weakness. The conceding-to-thrive argument has clear implications with respect to “candidate cases” in developmental Asia, where ruling parties have not yet conceded democratization despite being well-positioned to thrive were they to do so, such as the world’s most populous dictatorship, China.

Bio:

Joseph Wong is the Ralph and Roz Halbert Professor of Innovation at the Munk School of Global Affairs, University of Toronto, and Professor of Political Science and Canada Research Chair in Democratization, Health and Development. Professor Wong was the Director of the Asian Institute at the Munk School from 2005 to 2014. In addition to academic articles and book chapters, Professor Wong has published four books: Healthy Democracies: Welfare Politics in Taiwan and South Korea (2004) and Betting on Biotech: Innovation and the Limits of Asia’s Developmental State (2011), both published by Cornell University Press, as well as Political Transitions in Dominant Party Systems: Learning to Lose, co-edited with Edward Friedman (Routledge, 2008), and Innovating for the Global South: Towards a New Innovation Agenda, co-edited with Dilip Soman and Janice Stein (University of Toronto Press, 2014). He is currently working on a book monograph with Dan Slater (University of Chicago) on Asia’s development and democracy, which is currently under contract with Princeton University Press. Professor Wong earned his Hons. B.A from McGill University (1995) and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin-Madison (2001). 

DEPARTMENT OF ANTHROPOLOGY COLLOQUIUM SERIES

In politics, mainstream media, and humanitarianism, people equate North Korea with oppression and violence while characterizing South Korea along the lines of freedom and liberation. However, North Koreans resettling into South Korea are not newborn, unformed citizens ready to regain qualitative life. Violence— visible and invisible, public and private, intentional and unintentional—permeates the experience of forced migrations and often extends into post-resettlement life, shaping and defining every phase of refugee resettlement processes. It is of paramount importance, therefore, to examine how violence operates in the lived experiences of citizenship as refugees resettle into host societies of asylum. In this talk, Joowon Park will discuss the ways in which North Korean “defectors/refugees” experience ongoing structural and invisible violence in South Korea (e.g. stunted growth from malnutrition, stigma and discrimination, family separation and remittance networks, legacies from the Korean War), and how this violence impacts their citizenship and belonging. Based on ethnographic research, his study traces the active role of violence in post-resettlement life and the structural obstacles complicating—even shutting out—the possibility of gaining social entrance within the country of resettlement despite the seeming advantages of shared history, culture, and language.

Joowon Park is a Ph.D. candidate and lecturer at the American University in Washington, DC. His research is supported by grants from the National Science Foundation, the Wenner-Gren Foundation, the Explorers Club Washington Group, and numerous internal grants from American University. His interests in violence and citizenship have been influenced in part by his background as a Korean raised and educated in Kenya where he encountered these issues in everyday life. Thus, the themes of power, governance, and structural inequality—which are the central themes of his research—also frame his teaching. Joowon Park holds a bachelor's degree from DePauw University and a MAPA from American University.