Why Praying “Hail, Mary” Does Not Denote to Invade Iraq and to Accept Capitalism? Contemporary...

Romanian Political Science Review

vol. XV, no. 1 2015

The end of the Cold War, and the extinction of communism both as an ideology and a practice of government, not only have made possible an unparalleled experiment in building a democratic order in Central and Eastern Europe, but have opened up a most extraordinary intellectual opportunity: to understand, compare and eventually appraise what had previously been neither understandable nor comparable. Studia Politica. Romanian Political Science Review was established in the realization that the problems and con cerns of both new and old democracies are beginning to converge. The journal fosters the work of the first generations of Romanian political scientists permeated by a sense of critical engagement with European and American intellectual and political traditions that inspired and explained the modern notions of democracy, pluralism, political liberty, individual freedom, and civil rights. Believing that ideas do matter, the Editors share a common commitment as intellectuals and scholars to try to shed light on the major political problems facing Romania, a country that has recently undergone unprecedented political and social changes. They think of Studia Politica. Romanian Politica Science Review as a challenge and a mandate to be involved in scholarly issues of fundamental importance, related not only to the democratization of Romanian polity and politics, to the ”great transformation” that is taking place in Central and Eastern Europe, but also to the make-over of the assumptions and prospects of their discipline. They hope to be joined in by those scholars in other countries who feel that the demise of communism calls for a new political science able to reassess the very foundations of democratic ideals and procedures.

UNIVERSITY OF BUCHAREST FACULTY OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

vol. XV, no. 1 2015

STUDIA POLITICA (ISSN 1582-4551)

Romanian Political Science Review is published quarterly by the Faculty of Political Science at the University of Bucharest

an is printed and mailed by Bucharest University Press

International Advisory Board Mauro CALISE (Università Federico II di Napoli), Dominique COLAS (IEP Paris)

Jean-Michel DE WAELE (Université Libre de Bruxelles) Jean-Michel EYMERI-DOUZANS (IEP Toulouse)

Raffaella GHERARDI (Università degli Studi di Bologna), Guy HERMET (IEP Paris) Marc LAZAR (IEP Paris), Ronald H. LINDEN (University of Pittsburgh) Pierre MANENT (EHESS Paris), Leonardo MORLINO (LUISS Roma)

Gianfranco PASQUINO (Bologna), Cristian PREDA (Universitatea din Bucureşti) Antoine ROGER (IEP Bordeaux), Giovanni SARTORI (New York)

Marco TARCHI (Università di Firenze)

Editor Ruxandra IVAN

Editorial Board Alexandra IONESCU, Andrei NICULESCU, Mihai CHIOVEANU,

Caterina PREDA, Sorina SOARE, Claudiu TUFIŞ, Irina NASTASĂ – MATEI, Matei DEMETRESCU

Editorial Staff Laurenţiu MUŞOIU (desktop publisher manuscript & cover graphic)

© Facultatea de Ştiinţe Politice, Universitatea din Bucureşti Revistă înregistrată în BDI

Contents ARTICULI ................................................................................................ 7 ARMAND GOȘU, OCTAVIAN MANEA, The Consequences of the Militarization of Crimea for

the Wider Black Sea Region. .................................................................................... 9

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH, Romania’s Foreign Policy Towards the Wider Black Sea Area in the Aftermath of the 2007 EU-Accession. A by-Product of Exogenous Influences, Colliding Interests and Energy Rivalrie .................................................................. 21

LIANA ANDREEA IONIȚĂ, Is European Union Law a Fully Self-Contained Regime?A

Theoretical Inquiry of the Functional Legal Regimes in the Context of Fragmentation of International Law. ....................................................................... 39

MARIÁN SEKERÁK, Why Praying “Hail, Mary” Does Not Denote to Invade Iraq and to

Accept Capitalism? Contemporary Catholicism and Its Relation to Neoconservative Ideology ....................................................................................... 61

ESZTER PETRONELLA SOÓS, Comparing Orbánism and Gaullism. The Gaullist

Physiognomy of Orbán’s Post-2010 Hungary ......................................................... 91 ALEXANDRU VOLACU, On the Ideological Incompatibilities of Distributive Justice ...................... 109 RECENSIONES ....................................................................................... 133

EKATERINA KALININA, Mediated Post-Soviet Nostalgia, Sodertorns Högskola, Stockholm,

2014 (BOGDAN C. ENACHE) ..................................................................................... 135 CRISTIAN VASILE, Viața intelectuală și artistică în primul deceniu al regimului Ceaușescu

1965-1974, with a preface by VLADIMIR TISMĂNEANU, Humanitas, București, 2014 (CONSTANTIN ALIN THEODOR) ........................................................................ 138

ABSTRACTS ............................................................................................ 143 AUTORES ................................................................................................. 147

ARTICULI

The Consequences of the Militarization

of Crimea for the Wider Black Sea Region

ARMAND GOȘU, OCTAVIAN MANEA

2014 might be remembered as a full disclosure moment when Russia became an upfront challenger and spoiler of the post Cold War security order. The entire Eastern Frontier of NATO and its near abroad, especially the wider Black Sea region, are once again theaters of intense geopolitical contestation. But the nature of this competition is significantly different at a time when the balance between the forces of denial and forces of control favors increasingly the former1. The immediate consequence of these maturing security trends is that the reliability of the US traditional approach to project power is questioned2. In fact, Russia is already capitalizing on this “broad structural change in the technological environment of defense” aiming to impose its own zone of exclusion that keeps NATO’s presence at bay3. In the post Crimea’ annexation security environment, there is an increasing observable alignment between Russian intentions and Russian capabilities, a volatile combination that is already affecting the wider Black Sea region. Before the Northern Flank (the wider Baltic Sea region) the credibility of the Alliance might be probed firstly in the Black Sea.

The Seizure of Crimea as A Regional Game-Changer

While holding talks in Kiev with Ukrainian high officials, General Philip Breedlove, NATO's top military commander, told the local press that he was worried about the “militarization of Crimea… that the capabilities in

1 Jan van Tol, “A2/AD-What Is It and How Would It Work in Central Europe?”, CEPA, December 2014: “In an era of precision warfare, it will be far easier and cheaper to deny warfare domain -air, seas, land, space or cyberspace- than it is to maintain control of or within them”.

2 Remarks of Robert Work, Deputy Secretary of Defense, during Defense One Summit, November 25th, 2014, http://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2014/11/watch-defense-one-summit-here/99911/, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

3 This is a snapshot that Paul Bracken developed in his book about Asia (Fire in the East. The Rise of Asian Military Power and the Second Nuclear Age, Harper Collins, 2000), but one that is increasingly applicable also to the post-Crimea annexation Black Sea region.


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Crimea that are being installed will bring effect to almost the entire Black Sea”4. In its consequences, Crimea's absorption by Russia changes the current balance of forces in the Black Sea.

In the future, even if a new base is built near the port of Novorossiisk, consolidating the position of the Russian Black Sea Fleet, Crimea would still be the center of gravity of the Russian military footprint, consolidating its ability to project force deep into the Mediterranean. The military facilities in the peninsula will be supplemented, as President Vladimir Putin promised on 23 September 2014, while visiting Crimea. He said that 80 new ships would bolster the capability of the Russian fleet by 2020, with 206 additional support ships. A gigantic rearming program worth $700 billion, already running, was meant to radically change the Russian armed forces, including the Black Sea Fleet, in tatters after the break up of the USSR. The military Black Sea Fleet will be beefed up by 6 new frigates and 6 submarines.

The Russian rearming programme was launched after the war against Georgia by Anatoli Serdiukov, the minister of defence at that time. According to this programme, Russian army will receive over the next decade 100 warships, 1.000 aircrafts, 1.000 helicopters, 14.000 vehicles, 56 batteries of the S-400 anti-aircraft and anti-missile system, 10 batteries of S-500 surface to air missile systems and runs a complex programme for modernisation of the Russia’s nuclear forces. Parts of this programme are threatened by EU and US sanctions5.

The rearming of the Russian fleet will shift the balance of power in the Black Sea from a slight superiority of NATO forces (Turkey, Bulgaria, Romania) to Russian military superiority6. The seizure of Crimea deals a heavy blow to Ukraine's naval potential, pushing almost completely the Ukrainian fleet out of the Black Sea. The loss of the 50 Ukrainian military sites in Crimea weakens Kiev's military potential. Ukrainian military capabilities are poorer not only by the 57 military ships lost to Russia as a result of the Crimean occupation, but also by the loss of 20% of air force and air defense capabilities. If Moscow continues its State Program of Armaments by the year 2020, and this

4 Press Availability of General Philip M. Breedlove, Commander, U.S. European

Command and Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, of NATO Allied Command Operations, Kyiv, Ukraine, November 26, 2014: “We are concerned that the capabilities in Crimea that are being installed will bring effect to almost the entire Black Sea. […] Coastal defense cruise missiles, surface-to-air missiles and other capabilities that are able to exert military influence over the Black Sea”. http://ukraine.usembassy.gov/statements/ breedlove-pressavail-kyiv-11262014.html, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

5 Sanctions have reduced the possibility of acquiring new technologies especially in electronics and computers. Anna Maria Dyner, “The Modernisation of the Russian Army: Too Ambitious for the Local Defence Industry”, PISM Bulletin, no. 31 (763), 20 March 2015. (www.pism.pl).

6 Andrzej Wilk, “The Military Consequences of the Annexation of Crimea” (2014-03-19), www.osw.waw.pl, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

The Consequences of the Militarization of Crimea


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program is not met with a response from NATO states on the Black Sea, the Russian fleet will become the most important force in the basin.

Russian troops in Crimea should be estimated to number 26.000-28.000 in March 2015, including approximately 13.000 of the Russian Black Sea Fleet. Other estimates the number of Russian troops in Crimea between 29.000 and 40.0007.

At the same time, Moscow is no longer limited by the Russian Ukrainian agreement of 1997, which regulated the stationary units of the Armed Forces of Russian on Ukrainian territory. The money spent by Russia on the rent, $97 million US, will now be invested by Moscow in other military programs. The defense budget will go up in 2015, reaching 4.2% of the GDP, a record for the transition period. The budget for the intelligence services is practically double the defense budget. By comparison, the 2013 defense budget was 3.2%, and 3.4% in 20148. Russia's military program also supposes the restoration of dozens of military bases and airports abandoned after the break up of the Soviet Union, as well as building new military garrisons, not only in Crimea, but also in Belarus and Kyrgystan.

Since 2013, the Russian armed forces have been constantly holding military exercises, one after another. They last longer and longer, and the human resources, military equipment and military technology involved are greater and greater. For instance, The East – 2014, held in September in the far east of Russia, involved, according to official data, 150.000 soldiers, of which 6.500 reservists, 1.500 tanks, 4.000 armored combat vehicles, 632 aircraft and 84 warships. These maneuvers were held in the Pacific, but during the same period, tactical exercises for the Baltic Fleet were held in Kaliningrad with the participation of 1.000 soldiers and 280 combat vehicles9.

Recently, between March 16th-21st 2015, Russia organized unplanned military exercises in the Northern and Western military districts. These involved around 38.000 troops, 3.360 combat vehicles, 41 warships, 15 submarines, 110 aircraft and helicopters. A special attention was dedicated to the Arctic region by concentrating troops in Murmansk10. In the meantime,

7 Igor Sutyagin, “Russian Forces in Ukraine”, Briefing Paper, RUSI, March 2015

(www.rusi.org). According to Sutyagin, in eastern Ukraine (Donbass), in the summer 2014, were involved in the military actions 6.000-6.500 Russian servicemen and approximately 10.000 at the moment of direct Russian involvement in December 2014. The number of Russian troops operating in Donbass was aproximately 9.000 by the end of February 2015.

8 Pavel Felgenhauer, “Preparing for War Against the US on All Fronts – A Net Assessment of Russia’s Defense and Foreign Policy Since the Start of 2014”, Eurasia Daily Monitor, vol. 11, issue 183, October 16, (www.jamestown.org), accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

9 Andrzej Wilk, “Is Russia Making Preparations for a Great War?” (2014-09-24), www.osw.waw.pl.

10 “Vnezapnaja proverka beogotovnosti VS RF zavershena”, 21.03.2015, http://ria.ru/defense_safety/20150321/1053784226.html, accessed on March 21st, 2015.



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other 1.000 troops were participating in an exercise organized in Sakhalin Island, in Pacific. The exercises also includes more than 300 pieces of T-72 tanks, SU-24 atack bombers and Mi-8 helicopters11.

We get almost daily news about new successes involving Russian missiles, which always hit their target. Russian military pilots harass jetliners from neighboring countries, and it is to be expected that the Russian Navy will deploy in a similar posture.

The Role of Crimea in the Broader Russian National Security Mindset

Contemporary Russian strategic culture seems to be deeply influenced

by a national security narrative shaped by Russian leaders’ view on their own history. In this reading, Crimea is more than a peninsula, having a special symbolic value for Russia. It is present in school textbooks, in Lev Tolstoi's Sevastopolskie Rasskazy, celebrating the heroism of the Red Army which defended Crimea during WWII.

In fact, the first direction of expansion for the founder of the Russian Empire, Peter the Great, was southwards, to the shores of the Azov and Black seas, and towards Crimea. Moscow, “The Third Rome”, was organically tempted to get closer geographically to the first two, meaning Constantinople and Rome, the warm seas, the Black and Mediterranean seas, not the frozen North.

In 1688, a Russian military campaign against the Tatars of Crimea failed. The same lack of success that the first siege of the Azov fortification met with in 1695, whose defences, one year later, were taken over by Peter the Great. Were it not for the peace at Carlowitz and the Northern War, Peter the Great would have probably concentrated his attention and resources on the Black Sea region over the following few years. However, the 1711 defeat at Stănilești, in the Pruth River Campaign, when the Czar himself was miraculously saved (Oriental corruption played a determining role in this), froze for half a century Russia's expansionist projects in the Black Sea area. It was as late as 1771 that Catherine the Great occupied Crimea, which she formally annexed 12 years later, in 1783. For the following 200 years, the Black Sea region remained the center of attention for the political, military, and art elite, penetrating deeply the Russian and Soviet public consciousness, whether we talk about the Russian-Turkish wars, the Crimean War or the Black Sea Straits.

If in the 18th century the game changer in the Black Sea area was the annexation of Crimea by Catherine the Great, in 2014 Russia's seizure and

11 “1,000 Russian Military Personnel Involved in Tactical Drills on Sakhalin” (20.03.2015),

www.sputniknews.com, accessed on March 20th, 2015.



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annexation of Crimea was a game changer not only for the larger Black Sea region, but for the entire global security system. Now, in February 2014, the trigger was a fear that a pro-Western government in Kiev would allow NATO to take control of the naval base at Sevastopol, which would have ended the Russian Black Sea Fleet and force projection into the Mediterranean.

In the end the annexation of Crimea is intimately linked with how Russian elites perceive the status of Ukraine itself. Many of those that are now part of Russia's foreign security and policy apparatus, came up intellectually reading Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki, a book published for the first time in 1997, and several subsequent editions, in issues of tens and hundreds of thousands of copies, for whom Ukraine's independence was a geopolitical catastrophe, a situation to be rectified right away12. At the same time, Ukraine is the centerpiece of the project that President Putin brought with him to the Kremlin upon his return in 2012 whose aim is the founding of the Euro-Asiatic Union.

What happened over the past year in Crimea will have a formative influence on security arrangements in the wider region, from the Black Sea, Caucasus, and Eastern Balkans to the Mediterranean. The US and NATO can no longer count on ruling the waves of the Black Sea, or on being uncontested in the Mediterranean.

Larger Global Trends

The seizure of Crimea comes at a particular moment, in the context of an increasing contested global environment, where the insidious challengers of American power like Beijing and Moscow have started to build weapon systems able to counteract the technological comparative advantages that provided U.S. the ability to control land, air, space and sea. In fact, China and Russia are developing a vanguard of denial capabilities ‒ anti-ship, anti-air, counter-space, cyber, electronic warfare ‒ aimed at U.S. traditional advantages. This is the reality that consumed the top Pentagon leadership during the past year. In September 2014, U.S. Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel gave a speech in Rhode Island where he highlighted the special features of the long-term,

12 Aleksandr Dugin, Osnovy geopolitiki. Geopoliticeskie budushee Rossij, Izd. Artogea,

Moskva, 1997, p. 348: “Ukraine's sovereignty is such a negative phenomenon for Russian geopolitics that, in principle, it can easily burst into armed conflict. […] Ukraine as an independent state manifesting territorial ambitions is a great danger for the whole of Eurasia, and without solving the problems raised by Ukraine, any discussion of continental geopolitics is rendered pointless. […] It is an absolute imperative in Russian Black Sea geopolitics for Moscow to have total and unmitigated control over the entire territory from Ukraine to Abkhazia […] The northern coast of the Black has to be exclusively Eurasian and under Moscow's centralized control”.



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comprehensive military modernization programs assumed by China and Russia that

“appear designed to counter traditional U.S. military advantages – in particular, our ability to project power to any region across the globe by surging aircraft, ships, troops, and supplies. All this suggests that we are entering an era where American dominance on the seas, in the skies, and in space – not to mention cyberspace – can no longer be taken for granted”13. The immediate consequence is that the maturation of these anti-access

(A2)14 and area-denial (AD)15 postures will make it harder for the US to deploy, project power, gain access and even operate in certain theaters. As the National Defense Panel report of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review concluded: [this] “will make it difficult for U.S. forces to gain entry to and maneuver within areas that once were relatively secure”16. At the same time the credibility of U.S. deterrence umbrella, but also the capability to enforce international law and the global rules of the road (like freedom of the seas) are also under question:

“Without our superiority, the strength and credibility of our alliances will

suffer. Our commitment to enforcing long-established international law, rules of the road, and principles could be doubted by both our friends and our adversaries”17. For Europe, the crisis of the expeditionary model, a key ingredient of

the Euro-Atlantic collective security system, suggests that the reassurance package adopted under the Wales summit and based on the spearhead force inside the NRF (NATO Response Force) – in itself a power projection component – is no longer enough. The Wales summit solution made sense in a time when the environment that should have received the NATO reinforcements was highly permissive and Western power projection capabilities were unchallenged. Today, the assumption of a highly permissive environment no

13 “Defense Innovation Days” ‒ keynote speech delivered by Secretary of Defense Chuck

Hagel, Newport, Rhode Island, Wednesday, September 03, 2014, http://www.defense. gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1877, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

14 “Those actions and capabilities, usually long-range, designed to prevent an opposing force from entering in an operational area”, in Sam Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare. Countering A2/AD strategies, Naval Institute Press, 2013.

15 “Those actions and capabilities, usually of shorter range, designed to limit its freedom of action within the operational area”, in Sam Tangredi, Anti-Access Warfare. Countering A2/AD strategies, Naval Institute Press, 2013.

16 The National Defense Panel Review’s report of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review, co-chaired by William J. Perry and John P. Abizaid, p. 21.

17 Reagan National Defense Forum Keynote as delivered by Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel, Ronald Reagan Presidential Library, Simi Valley, CA, Saturday, November 15, 2014, http://www.defense.gov/Speeches/Speech.aspx?SpeechID=1903, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.



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longer holds, mainly because Russia is fielding comprehensive counter-intervention capabilities that have real potential to keep NATO’s expeditionary forces at bay. To many observers, the emergence of access-denial capabilities is transforming also the way the Eastern Flank should be secured:

“Everyone who has been in the power projection business now faces the same

problem, which is that in a crisis dispatching expeditionary forces may be highly destabilizing and in a conflict it may be simply impossible because those forces would not have protected ports and airfields they could flow into. I am skeptical of the whole idea of a super-rapid reaction force because it fails to understand the changing military competition and the security environment. To meet these challenges there is no substitute for forward-based forces. The force will either be there before the crisis and conflict or I have doubts if it will ever get there”18.

Black Sea as a Russian A2/AD Lake

The seizure of Crimea, with all the game changing consequences for the wider Black Sea region, comes at a particular moment in time when the traditional US approach for projecting power on a global scale (the ability to gain access, operate and be forward present in key strategic regions of the world) is increasingly marked by an existential crisis.

The current and prospective shopping list announced by Moscow for boosting its military assets in Crimea suggests that the Black Sea region is gradually entering in the age of A2/AD trends. Overall, by the end of the decade, Moscow plans to spend US $151 billion to modernize its navy and the Black Sea Fleet. The modernization will emphasize the emergence of a counter-intervention capability for the Black Sea along the lines of A2/AD logic, including submarines, anti-ship, anti-surface and anti-air capabilities. At the same time, the annexation of Crimea will add long range land-based missile systems (like S-400 SAM system), S-300 platforms, but also the Iskander surface-to-surface missiles that have an operational range of 400-kilometer19. By the end of the decade, Russia's Black Sea force will tally 206 ships20. By 2016, the Black Sea Fleet will receive six brand-new Kilo-class submarines that will be stationed in a new base at Novorossiisk21. In addition, Tu-22M3 long-

18 Personal interview with Jim Thomas, Vice President at the Center for Strategic and

Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), October 2014, Washington, D.C. 19 Ibidem. 20 Matthew Bodner, “Russia's Black Sea Fleet Will Get 80 New Warships to Repel NATO”,

The Moscow Times, September 23rd, 2014, http://www.themoscowtimes.com/ business/article/russia-s-black-sea-fleet-will-get-80-new-warships-to-repelato/507682. html, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

21 Ibidem.



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range strategic bombers will be deployed in the region22. In short, the annexation of Crimea is already shifting the geography of control in the wider Black Sea region. In the past, the Black Sea used to be called a Russian lake; now it is becoming an A2/AD Russian bubble.

But why is this a threat for the regional security? History shows that when a regional power driven by a revisionist agenda has achieved a certain self-aware security immunity level, by developing a nuclear shield or an A2/AD umbrella, it may become more incentivized to disrupt the local status-quo, it may be emboldened to low-cost revisionism through low-intensity conflict. In the past, it was the case of Pakistan that under the new found nuclear umbrella started to employ sub-conventional assets aimed at India’s ability to control the Kashmir province:

“Nuclearization has both enabled and emboldened its use of militancy.[…]

The development of first a covert and then an overt nuclear capability appears to have enabled Pakistan to pursue the boldest aspects of its proxy strategy with confidence that doing so will face few, if any, important consequences”23. Arguably, it is also the case of the recent Chinese behavior and the

sovereignty claims made over significant parts of its near-seas (South China and East China Seas). Apparently there are two strategic complement realities at play in East Asia today24. On one side, there is the maturation of the Chinese A2/AD bubble aiming to create “a deep maritime and air buffer zone beyond its coast”25 that gives Beijing the potential to defend its near-abroad, but also the ability “to dominate waters near Taiwan and in the South and East China seas”26 by keeping a US presence at bay. On the other side, protected by this A2/AD umbrella, China has become more incentivized to gradually alter the geography of the region, operating under the threshold of a formal casus belli. The recent developments in the South China Sea (the increased Chinese assertiveness near

22 Igor Delanoe, “Russia’s Plans for Crimea: the Black Sea Fleet”, Russian International Affairs Council, July 23rd, 2014, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/blogs/igor_delanoe/? id_4=1305, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

23 More on this in C. Christine Fair, Fighting to the End: The Pakistan’s Army Way of War, Oxford University Press, 2014. Of particular interest it is chapter 9, “Jihad Under the Nuclear Umbrella”, p. 250/251.

24 Interview with Robert Haddick, October 2014: “On one side there is salami-slicing, gradual, slow accumulation of small changes creating new facts on the ground in the East and South China Seas in order to patiently expand their zone of influence there. The second part of it is the creation of certain military capabilities that make it very difficult for an expeditionary power like US to take any kind of actions to roll back the previous Chinese accumulations that they gained through the salami slicing”.

25 Robert Haddick, Fire on the Water. China, America and the Future of the Pacific, Naval Institute Press, September 2014.

26 James Steinberg, Michael O’Hanlon, Strategic Reassurance and Resolve: U.S. China Relations in the Twenty First Century, Princeton University Press, 2014, p. 105.



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Spratly and Paracel island groups but also the Scarborough Reef), as well as the establishment of an Air Defense Identification Zone (ADIZ) in the East China Sea in November 2013, seem to validate the hypothesis that a revisionist power that has acquired an A2/AD proficiency level is also more likely to be emboldened to challenge the regional status-quo through insidious salami-slicing tactics and sub-conventional scenarios27. In particular, the activation of the Chinese ADIZ was interpreted as “an exercise in anti-access/area denial (A2/AD), what the Chinese term counter-intervention, in miniature”28.

The seizure of Crimea might signal the beginning of a new stage: the slow motion crippling of the Western rules-based order through the emergence of regions of exceptionalism and exclusion that, as Henry Kissinger pointed out in his new book “question their validity in their present form and have made clear that they would work to modify them”29. It might be a matter of time until a Black Sea keep-out zone will join other key regions of the world where traditional freedoms associated with the open commons are increasingly undermined by the assertiveness of mature A2/AD powers30. In the Chinese case, there seems to be a correlation between the gradual development of the A2/AD capabilities and the coercive salami-slicing tactics employed in the South China and East China Seas. Consequently, as Russia becomes a mature A2/AD power it may also employ similar sub-conventional irregular tactics inside the wider Black Sea by challenging the territorial waters of NATO littoral states through creative claims over their EEZs and energy perimeters, or through the activation of an air defense identification zone (ADIZ) or imposing a maritime defense identification zone (MDIZ). Over the past year, through its actions in Crimea and Eastern Ukraine, Russia demonstrated a clear intent to become a spoiler of the European security order and its core principles. Now beyond intentions, Russia seems to deploy niche capabilities that put in jeopardy the freedom of movement (with all the evident consequences for the

27 The 2012 Scarborough Reef incident in particular highlighted a larger operational

template and new unconventional ways to intimidate, coerce and compel short of using force in a traditional manner. The Scarborough Reef incident emphasize a new aggression and expansion pattern, what the PLA General Zhang Zhaozhong has called-the cabbage strategy, which means surrounding a contested territory with layers of walls using “so many boats — fishermen, fishing administration ships, marine surveillance ships, navy warships — that the island is thus wrapped layer by layer like a cabbage”. More details in Jeff Himmelman, “A Game of Shark And Minnow ‒ Who Will Win Control of the South China Sea”, The New York Times Magazine, http://www.nytimes.com/newsgraphics/ 2013/10/27/south-china-sea/, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

28 Dean Cheng, “China’s ADIZ as Area Denial”, The National Interest, December 4th, 2013, http://nationalinterest.org/commentary/chinas-adiz-area-denial-9492?page=2, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

29 Henry Kissinger, World Order, Penguin Press, 2014, p. 2. 30 The National Defense Panel Review’s report of the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review,

co-chaired by William J. Perry and John P. Abizaid, p. 11.



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energy security of the region) and have the ability to transform the Black Sea in a no-go area by keeping at bay any NATO reinforcement presence31.

Conclusions

2014, provided a sentiment of disintegration of “any sense of a framework, an order, a system in which peace and stability could be restored”32. It is in this larger context that the collapse of the post-Cold War consensus, mainly the principles that created its foundation, happened. The 1975 Helsinki Final Act, the 1990 Paris Charter for Europe, the 1994 Budapest memorandum – the core features of the post-Cold War normative framework – all are in question. The problem is that “when you have a collapse of order, you can expect all kinds of things”.33 For sure, assumptions about how we read and assess the regional security landscape need to change:

“It is no longer appropriate to have a mindset that thinks in the binary world

of war and peace; campaign or contingency. The world is now in a permanent state of competition. We are in an age of continuous engagement.”34

At minimum, NATO needs to revise its regional deterrence-by-denial

posture. As such, the Alliance should start mirroring the Russian mindset by cultivating its own access/denial bubbles35 along the Eastern border, in between the Baltic-Black Seas. In short, the Alliance needs to become an A2/AD actor. Particularly the CEE states should be incentivized to invest in layers of access-denial platforms capable of challenging the assumption of low-cost power grabs or the expectation of a light territorial fait accompli. In this broader context, a

31 All these different layers of long-range, anti-aircraft and anti-ship missiles together with

the long range S-400 land-based missile systems that will be deployed in Crimea suggest a “large spectrum of capability to strike ground targets, interdict maritime traffic and impose a no-fly zone.” (in Igor Delanoe, “Russia’s Plans for Crimea: the Black Sea Fleet”, Russian International Affairs Council, July 23rd, 2014, http://russiancouncil.ru/en/blogs/igor_delanoe/?id_4=1305, accessed on April 3rd, 2015)

32 George Packer, “The Birth of a New Century”, Foreign Policy, November/December 2014, p. 54.

33 Interview with Toomas Hendrick Ilves, President of Estonia, December 22nd, 2014, http://www.president.ee/en/media/interviews/10923-qwe-have-allowed-aggression-to-standq-the-american-interest/index.html, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

34 Speech at RUSI's Conference on the NATO Summit, September 2014 by General Sir Nicholas Houghton, Chief of the British Defence Staff.

35 Interview with Jim Thomas, “Collective Defence in the Age of Anti-Access Bubbles”, Small Wars Journal, November 16th, 2011, http://smallwarsjournal.com/jrnl/art/interview-with-jim-thomas-collective-defence-in-the-age-of-anti-access-bubbles, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.



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special attention should be focused on developing the A2/AD capabilities (land, sea and undersea) of the Black Sea NATO member states. Over time, the standard reality on the NATO’s Eastern Flank should be closer to George Kennan’s snapshot: ”We must be like the porcupine who only gradually convinces the carnivorous beast of prey that he is not a fit object of attack”36.

In the age of hybrid threats, the time has come for a NATO rebalance/pivot on the Eastern Flank through a more even distribution of its military infrastructure and assets beyond the Fulda Gap and the geographical boundaries of the Cold War alignment, across the New Europe. Such a move will respond to the security deficit created by the existing outdated defense-in-depth model37 at the core of NATO. In this logic, the Alliance will opt for a flexible preclusive defense posture38 based on a balanced mix of small sub-conventional and conventional units. A special role in this revised regional posture should be attributed to local rapid reaction forces as the one developed this year by Lithuania whose main mission-menu is focused on countering hybrid warfare threats39. At the same time, NATO needs to invest in sub-conventional deterrence in order to counter-act the kind of ambiguous aggression that was particularly used in Ukraine. In this context, the Alliance should actively building on the trend that Russia is also exploiting that of merging precision weapons with irregular warfare tactics:

“On one side, we need precision-guided artillery, mortars and missiles in the

frontline areas; second is the sensor net that such forces need to have with aerial, space, terrestrial layers. So the question becomes how can we create that sensor grid across borders that can provide early warning and targeting information for highly distributed, highly irregular ground guerilla forces?”40.

Ultimately the Alliance needs to restore its deterrence by punishment

capital. In this context, NATO should borrow a page from the Cold War history

36 A note that George Kennan made in his diary in the early days of the Cold War, quoted in

Nicholas Thompson, The Hawk and the Dove. Paul Nitze, George Kennan and the History of the Cold War, Henry Holt and Company, New York, 2009, p. 100.

37 Jakub Grygiel, A. Wess Mitchell, “Limited War is Back”, The National Interest, August 28th, 2014, http://nationalinterest.org/feature/limited-war-back-11128, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

38 Idem, “A Preclusive Strategy to Defend the NATO Frontier”, The American Interest, December 2, 2014, http://www.the-american-interest.com/2014/12/02/a-preclusive-strategy-to-defend-the-nato-frontier/, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

39 Rick Lyman, “Ukraine Crisis in Mind, Lithuania Establishes a Rapid Reaction Force”, New York Times, December 19th, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/12/20/ world/europe/lithuania-assembles-a-force-as-it-readies-for-whatever-russia-mayring.html, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

40 Personal interview with Jim Thomas, Vice President at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments (CSBA), October 2014, Washington, D.C.



20

and develop its own offset strategy41 and capabilities able to hold at risk a competitor’s A2/AD umbrella. In the past, in key moments of the Cold War when new structural realities emboldened Russian belief in blitzkrieg victories, the offset strategies were a crucial variable in restoring the credibility of NATO’s holding strategy:

“So, these strategies, containment, deterrence and offset strategy were the

components of a broad holding strategy during the Cold War. I call it a holding strategy because it did not change the geopolitical conditions which led to the Cold War, but it did deter another World War and it did stem Soviet expansion in the world until the internal contradictions in the Soviet system finally caused the Soviet Union to collapse. The holding strategy worked”42. We may need to be able to demonstrate that point once again.

41 For an excellent historical background on offset strategies and how it should look like a

third US offset strategy read Robert Martinage’s report, Toward a New Offset Strategy. Exploiting U.S. Long-Term Advantages to Restore U.S. Global Power Projection Capability, CSBA, 2014.

42 Speech of William J. Perry, “Changing National Strategy”, April 1997, http://secure.afa. org/media/scripts/perry.asp, accessed on April 3rd, 2015.

Romania’s Foreign Policy Towards the Wider

Black Sea Area in the Aftermath of the 2007 EU-Accession

A by-Product of Exogenous Influences, Colliding Interests and Energy Rivalries

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH

With the accession materialized, the Romanian foreign policy was given the opportunity to enter a new stage – as it allowed the country to further pursue its vital interests1 – although the change in legal status brought a structural need for the consolidation of the integration process with Western institutions and a certain recalibration of the country’s diplomatic perspectives2. However, as Romania remained under the scrutiny and conditionality of the European Commission – especially with respect to the implementation of the acquis communautaire in the fields of justice and economy – the country’s behavioural pattern in the post-accession period was rather an inertial mimicking of its pre-accession dynamics.

In short, Bucharest did not manifest any special interest in using the superior institutional capacities available for the design and formulation of various foreign policy deliverables or in exploiting the possibility to upload its national preferences to Brussels foreign policy framework, and thus taking advantage of its newly achieved increased political influence within the EU. In fact, as all indigenous political actors began to exhibit a winner’s syndrome, trying to capitalize the electoral effects of the EU accession in order to settle their political disputes and achieve their political goals for the 2008 elections, the indigenous political system witnessed populist referenda, increased electoral volatility and overall political instability3.

1 Octavian Milevschi, “Romania: From Brotherly Affection with Moldova to

Disillusionment and Pragmatism”, in Marcin Kosienkowski, William Schreiber (eds.) Moldova: Arena of International Influences, Lexington Books, Plymouth, 2012, pp. 159-183/p. 163.

2 Liliana Pop, Romania’s Foreign Policy after EU Enlargement: A Country in Search of a Role, Institute for the Study of European Transformations - London Metropolitan University, 2009, p. 3.

3 William Crowther, Oana-Valentina Suciu, “Romania”, in Sten Berglund, Joakim Ekman,

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


22

In this context – following the initial idleness – Bucharest slowly evolved into a more vocal supporter of the projects and initiatives aimed at “intensifying EU Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) through tightening the Union’s relations with South East European and the Black Sea countries”4 while keeping itself anchored in its pre-accession perspectives. Moreover, during the German presidency of the EU Commission, Romania together with Greece and Bulgaria supported the creation of the Black Sea Synergy – officially launched in 2008 within the ENP framework – an initiative for a special EU policy in the Black Sea region, aimed at increasing the existent cooperation, through the implementation of sectorial partnerships5 covering various aspects like trade, energy market and transportation, frozen conflicts, illegal migration, organized crime, weapon and drug trafficking, environmental problems6.

Its involvement in the implementation of the Eastern dimension of the European Neighbourhood Policy and of the Black Sea Synergy did allow Bucharest to integrate some national perspectives into the formulation of the mainstream European standpoints, but also to develop a pro-active stance in the design of Brussels’ involvement vis-à-vis the Black Sea countries covered by ENP, like Moldova, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia or Ukraine. Of note, in the pre-accession period, Romania’s most important contribution to the development of a policy model for institutional interaction was represented by the initiation of the Black Sea Forum for Dialogue and Partnership (BSFDP) that took place in Bucharest in 2006 – an action aimed to diversify the regional cooperation framework dominated by the Black Sea Economic Cooperation (BSEC). The Forum – an expression of Romania’s endeavours to acquire a regulatory role in the Black Sea and to upgrade the political and security role of the existent institutional infrastructure7 by taking advantage of the superior external action capacity conferred to Bucharest by its strategic relationship with the US – can be conceptualized as an Americanized foreign policy deliverable by Bucharest, articulated as a political umbrella and aimed at allowing Washington to project its preferences and perspectives in the region while assigning Bucharest a key role in the implementation process. In practice, by somehow positioning Romania as a “security provider” and as a “democracy

Kevin Deegan-Krause, Terje Knutsen (eds.), The Handbook of Political Change in Eastern Europe, Edwar Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2013, pp. 369-407/p. 381.

4 Nikolaus El. Papakostas, Romanian Foreign Policy Post Euro-Atlantic Accession: So Far So Good, Institute of International Economic Relations, Athens, 2009, p. 15.

5 Ruxandra Ivan, “Black Sea Regional Leadership in Romanian Foreign Policy Discourse”, in Idem (ed.), New Regionalism or No Regionalism?: Emerging Regionalism in the Black Sea Area, Ashgate Publishing, Surrey, 2012, p. 164.

6 Nikolaus El. Papakostas, Romanian Foreign Policy Post Euro-Atlantic Accession…cit., p. 15. 7 Manoli Panagiota, The Dynamics of Black Sea Subregionalism, Ashgate Publishing,

Surrey, 2012, p. 113.

Romania’s Foreign Policy Towards the Wider Black Sea Area


23

enhancer” in the Eastern neighbourhood8 or as “a stability exporting factor”9– president Băsescu aimed to find a niche in the East-West dialogue10 by supporting the development of a security dimension of the existent BSEC cooperation11 which – in practice – was just an articulated diplomatic demarche alluding to the limitation of Russia’s influence in the Black Sea, directed towards other international fora.

Romania’s proposal for future institutionalization of Black Sea Regionalism, wasn’t however solitary. Bulgaria and Greece came with their own designs regarding the development of the cooperative framework in the Black Sea region, with Sofia opting for a network-of-networks institutional architecture, while Athens advocated an inter-institutional relationship12. Bulgaria’s approach – note Nikolov and Simeonov – seemed the closest with EU’s synergy philosophy of low level political designs and sectorial cooperation build upon the existent institutional infrastructure – and enjoyed the support of Germany, while Greece’s project was – in the same logic as Romania’s – articulated in order to promote the interests of another global player in the region, in this case Russia13.

Nonetheless, argue Nikolov, Greece, Romania and Bulgaria’s actions trying to impose a cooperative structure under a big-power’s patronage, proved illusionary14 with the Black Sea Synergy itself being eventually partially replaced in 2009 by the Eastern Partnership15 a Swedish-Polish foreign policy model which left a lesser role for the Black Sea EU members (Bulgaria, Romania and Greece) than any of the previous institutional concepts. Moreover, unlike the Black Sea Synergy – that was tailored as an interaction platform for EU members in their relations with Ukraine, Moldova, Belarus, Armenia, Azerbaijan, Georgia, Russia and Turkey – the Eastern Partnership was

8 Ruxandra Ivan, “Black Sea Regional Leadership…cit.”, p. 163. 9 Simona Soare, “The Romanian-Russian Bilateralrelationship in the Aftermath of

Romania’s Euroatlantic Integration”, Monitor Strategic, no. 1-2, 2010, pp. 93-121/p. 100. 10 Tatiana Bitkova, “The Place of Romania and Russia in the Context of East-West

Relations: Political and Cultural Aspects”, Romanian Review of Political Sciences and International Relations, vol.11, no. 2, 2014, pp. 44-52/p. 49

11 Sergiu Celac, “Romania, the Black Sea and Russia”, in David Phinnemore (ed.), The Eu and Romania: Great Expectations, The Federal Trust, London, UK, 2006, pp. 145-151/p. 148.

12 Krassimir Nikolov, “The Black Sea Cooperation and Bulgaria: Context, Concepts and Actors”, in Idem (ed.), Europe on the Black Sea Shore, Bulgarian European Community Studies Association, Sofia, 2007, p. 75.

13 Krassimir Nikolov, Kaloyan Simeonov, “The Effect of EU Accession on Bulgaria”, in Graham Avery, Anne Faber, Anne Schmidt (eds.), Enlarging the European Union: Effects on the New Member States and the EU, Trans European Policy Studies Association, Brussels, 2009, p. 84.

14 Ibidem, p. 76. 15 Ruxandra Ivan, “Black Sea Regional Leadership…cit.”, p. 164.

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


24

articulated in the logic of centralized institutionalization and, last but not least, kept both Moscow and Ankara outside of its conceptual borders16.

In this context, most projects launched within the framework of Black Sea Synergy, like the Black Sea Euroregion – launched in September 2008 under the initiative of Bucharest as a “forum for cooperation among local and regional authorities in the Bulgarian and Romanian Black Sea area”17 – proved nothing but formal conceptual constructions with broad and unclear agendas and with a minimal potential to contribute to the development of important foreign policy deliverables. Some explanation for these institutional development failures derive – according to Weaver – from the absence of regional cohesion or “regionness”18 due to the wide economic, political, social and cultural discrepancies and complex relationships among the Black Sea countries and under these circumstances from the absence of any internal and external potential for region building19.

Another key dimension of Romania’s foreign policy dynamics during this period was rooted in the deepening of the American-European rift that characterized the last part of president George W. Bush’s second term in Washington. In practice, for Bucharest – whose security and regional perspectives were built upon US/NATO institutional backbone – the US/EU rift led to a certain radicalization of its relations with some EU states an aspect which (arguably) temporized or delayed the achievement of some of Bucharest’s post-accession goals – like the strengthening of its profile within the EU, the accession to the Schengen zone and the removal of the regulatory barriers preventing the access of Romanian workforce in some Western EU markets (UK, Ireland, Netherlands, etc.).

Under these circumstances – aware that a change of administration in Washington could affect US interests in the Black Sea Region and in the Greater Middle East and, subsequently, its external action capacities – Bucharest tried to upload and institutionalize some of its Americanized regional perspectives both within NATO and EU (although in the latter case, to a much lesser extent). Of note, the Americanization of Romania’s foreign policy – and especially of its security dimension – took place under the form of an indigenous hybridizing of an imported transatlantic policy agenda, yet not as a by-product of an organic paradigm shift rooted in the democratic development

16 Carol Weaver, The Politics of the Black Sea Region – Eu Neighbourhood, Conflict Zone and Future Security Community, Ashgate Publishing, Surrey, 2013, p. 17.

17 Manoli Panagiota, The Dynamics of Black Sea…cit., p. 80. 18 Carol Weaver, The Politics of the Black Sea Region…cit., p. 20. 19 Mustafa Aydin, “Regional Cooperation in the Black Sea and Integration in the Euro-

Atlantic Structures”, in Jean Dufourcq, Lionel Ponsard (eds.), The Role of the Wider Black Sea Area in a Future European Security Space, NATO Defense College, Rome, 2005, pp. 31-43/p. 30.



25

of the domestic establishment, but rather as a means to enhance Romania’s status with the West and especially with the US, throughout the late 1990s and the 2000s. Regardless of its raison d’être, the process – mainly developing within the conceptual infrastructure of the Romanian-US Strategic Partnership – eventually germinated into several functional and structural outcomes. For instance, an extremely visible result is represented by the prevailing transformative dynamics of the recurrent post-2001 National Security Strategies whose crux was the identification of the international terrorism as Romania’s main security threat for Romania and the promotion of a security paradigm shift, from the reactive, defensive-oriented security policy from the mid 1990s and early 2000s towards a rather assertive policy, based on pre-emption and prevention of the risks and threats, seemingly stemming from the from an interplay between Washington interests and security perceptions. Moreover, among the discernible manifestations of the Americanization of Romania’s foreign agenda were Bucharest’s convergent alignment with Washington in regard to the conceptual overstretching of the self-defence argument from the of UN Charter’s Article 51 (the Bush doctrine) and for the subsequent US-led military intervention in Iraq, the signing of the agreement that prevented the extradition of US soldiers and personnel to International Criminal Court in The Hague, the actions taken in order to add value to the American interests in in Europe or in the regions of the world where Washington was, at that time, increasing its involvement and presence, like for instance Europe’s Extended Neighbourhood, like the active engagement in the redefinition of a security dimension of the Black Sea institutionalization, the promotion of energy transport projects aimed to integrate the Baku-Tbilisi-Ceihan bloc into an European energetic security equation and the support of GUAM regionalism and Ukraine and NATO’s bid for MAP status within NATO. And last but not least, the picture is completed by Bucharest’s back up for US basing presence on Romanian territory, promotion of a “NATO-first” security policy perspective for the EU, in a period when Berlin and Paris were putting pressure on Washington and the North Atlantic Alliance with the strategic institutional designs of CFSP/ESDP, and culminating with the support for Washington’s decision to the set-up of a land-based version of the Standard Missile 3 anti-ballistic interceptors on Romanian territory as a part of NATO’s Article 5 against an illusory Iranian threat.

In this context, the projected development, the institutionalization and solidification of EU’s CFSP/ESDP through the 2007 Treaty of Lisbon seemed to shape a window of opportunity for Bucharest as it held some undertones of significant changes in EU’s foreign policy perspectives, namely towards a global military power block able to export peace and stability beyond its boundaries. For Romania, which managed to promote elements of the indigenous political agenda through the military, economic and political support

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


26

of Washington, the perspective of an EU able to promote peace and stability in its immediate Eastern and Sothern neighbourhoods20, was therefore, extremely appealing.

However, overestimating Washington’s interest in the Wider Black Sea Area, EU states commitments regarding an EU solidarity in matters of energy supply and arguably encouraged by the political collisions that swept the Union following the gas disruption generated by the 2006 and 2009 Russian-Ukrainian gas disputes – Bucharest tried to upload its (also Americanized, and visibly anti-Russian) energy perspective into NATO, and marginally to EU’s institutional framework. For instance, Romania together with Poland became one of the most vocal NATO members to advocate for the Alliance to assume a more prominent and active role in the field of energy security, a domain largely non-military in nature, featuring a plethora of institutional and organizational players and, above all, being traditionally situated under the mantle of national responsibility. The “Energy NATO”, which evolved into a standard mantra of Bucharest and Warsaw rhetoric, was eventually included into the Alliance’s key issues agenda especially following the 2008 Bucharest Summit, when NATO was given a dedicated mandate to work in the field of energy security. Under these circumstances, although over the years NATO’s security agenda gained more coherence and systematization in three major areas: “Raising strategic awareness of energy developments with security implications, contributing to the protection of critical energy infrastructure, and enhancing energy efficiency in the military’ and the energy security became an essential part of the Alliance’s ‘modern toolkit”21, NATO kept only a modest role in Wider Black Sea Region’s energy security matrix. Subsequently – in an effort to deprive Moscow from an effective tool of political leverage – Bucharest pledged for diversification of EU’s energy suppliers and for the establishment of a common energy policy and of a unitary EU body to negotiate the hydrocarbon prices with Kremlin, thus replacing the existent system of bilateral deals, which allowed Russia to exert its influence over various EU member-states. Bucharest’s aspirations to have EU develop a pro-active involvement in the Black Sea neighbourhood, “to confront Russia’s assertiveness’ or to enhance Brussels’ political leverage in the region arguably relied on the anticipation that it will be ‘rendered the main promoter” of EU’s projected interests in the Balkans and in the Wider Black Sea Region, allowing it to increase its controllability of the regional development infrastructure22.

20 Carol Weaver, The Politics of the Black Sea Region…cit., p. 16. 21 NATO’s Energy Security Agenda - http://www.nato.int/docu/review/2014/NATO-

Energy-security-running-on-empty/NATO-energy-security-agenda/EN/index.htm [accessed, February 23, 2015]

22 Nikolaus El. Papakostas, Romanian Foreign Policy Post Euro-Atlantic Accession…cit., p. 21.



27

The most visible foreign policy vector circumscribed to Bucharest’s alignment and perspectives was its unconditional support for any energy-transport projects bypassing Russia and especially for Nabucco gas transport pipeline that became the country’s paramount energy security design. In particular, although EU rhetoric assigned Nabucco a symbolic role in the Union’s energy policy, in practice, Brussels’ involvement and support never left the theoretical realm. In fact, EU’s financial involvement became reality only in 2010, decades after the announcement of the project 23 – in a moment when the project was already facing risks of defaulted supply contracts – and arguably because Brussels had to react somehow against Russia’s decision to interrupt gas flows to Europe for 13 days, during its dispute with Kiev from January 2009.

Like many other EU projects, the establishment of a hydrocarbon transport corridor from the Caspian Sea to Europe triggered a complex matrix of collisions and interactions between hegemonic influences originating in Washington, Brussels or Moscow – ranging from strategic policies and ending with energetic rivalries and competition between various patronage-based hydrocarbon oligarchies and business circles keen to project their interests through the political infrastructure on which they exerted a dominant influence. In this sense, Nabucco was a paramount design – circumscribed to US strategy towards the Southern Caucasus (and to the interests of companies with a hidden power politics dimension from Washington) and an instrument aimed to marginalize Kremlin, to reduce Moscow’s benefits deriving from its energy transport monopoly and its influence “both with regards to EU and the Black Sea region”24 – which triggered “undisguised hostility”25 in Kremlin. Under these circumstances, Romanian establishment – whose rhetoric tried to portray Bucharest as Washington’s pivot ally in the Black Sea Region – evolved eventually into one of the most vocal advocates of Nabucco within EU. Subsequently – it became actively involved in the solidification of a support group for the project within EU, mainly consisting of states directly interested in mitigating the effects of future potential gas supply disruptions on their economies and/or of states openly and viscerally opposing Russia’s alleged coercive use of its energy policy.

On another hand, states like Germany, Italy or France – although affected by the 2006 and 2009 Russian-Ukrainian crises and being forced to draw gas from their existing stocks in order to make up for the missing

23 Katinka Barysch, Should the Nabucco Pipeline Project Be Shelved?, Centre for European

Reform - Policy Brief, 2010, p. 1. 24 Nikolaus El. Papakostas, Romanian Foreign Policy Post Euro-Atlantic Accession…cit., p. 20. 25 Erkan Erdogdu, “Bypassing Russia: Nabucco Project and Its Implications for the

European Gas Security”, University of Munich, MPRA Paper No. 26793, 2010, p. 11.

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


28

imported volumes26 – weren’t at all alarmed by EU’s reliance on Russian hydrocarbons. Neither were the ‘Russian-friendly’ states like Greece, Spain or Bulgaria. The lack of political will in some European capitals and – in some cases – even open opposition to Nabucco27 were tributary to a series of processes among which Gazpromization28 of the indigenous economies, Schroederization29 of the domestic political elites30 and the “raw deals” offered by Kremlin to some governments at the negotiation table31 directly or through indigenous energy holdings, played the most important role. In addition, in some particular cases, the opposition derived from the refusal of several states to allow Ankara exert its control over an alternative hydrocarbon transport pipeline, due to fears that Turkey could use its important leverage potential during its EU accession negotiations. In short, whether personal or group

26 Alain Guillemoles, “Les Leçons De La ‘Guerre Du Gaz”, Politique Internationale, vol. 1,

no. 123, 2009, p. 446, http://www.politiqueinternationale.com/revue/read2.php?id_revue= 123&id=805&searc h=&content=texte, [accessed January 13, 2014].

27 Erkan Erdogdu, “Bypassing Russia…cit.”, p. 17. 28 Gazpromization denotes a complex doctrine and behavioral dynamics employed by

Russian Administration during Putin and Medvedev eras, with both local and externalized dimensions. While local Gazpromization involved an aggressive acquisition of private Russian assets through state owned companies and the removal of foreign companies from the national extraction sector, externalized Gazpromization – mentioned above – is circumscribed to a convoluted portfolio of manifestations, tributary to the place of the implementation and namely if within or outside Russia’s “near abroad”. In the case of EU states, Gazpromization mainly consists in obtaining political concessions for Moscow’s policies and behavioural dynamics, through the exploitation of the focus on profit maximization and market strengthening of the EU energy holdings with a hidden power politics dimension, which can exert an important influence at any level of the indigenous administration. In some cases, it also incorporates the acquisition by Russian entities of share packages at energy companies managing or owning energy infrastructure, deposits, port infrastructure or distribution networks. In the case of CIS states or young democracies Gazpromization implicates the exploitation of the target-state’s energetic vulnerabilities or of Moscow’s direct control of the indigenous energy infrastructure in order to interfere with the local politics by favouring some elites with the aim of being conceded or granted various economic or political benefits. The political recalibration process often relies on a structural atopy within the indigenous political realm (a strong corruption network which can be developed or adjusted and/or a strong ex-Soviet intelligence infrastructure which can be easily activated or resuscitated).

29 Schroederization is a variant of Gazpromization, implemented in Germany and with the potential to be implemented in other states, consists in the coopting of a key political elite in an important position within a Russian state-owned energy entity (or in an equation of energetic profit), with the aim for the elite to exert its political influence in order to crystalize a network of interests that would serve Moscow’s strategic interests in the development of a project, policy or specific foreign policy alignment.

30 Eduard Rudolf Roth, “The Limits of Gazpromization”, Strategic Monitor, vol. 1, no. 3-4, 2010, pp. 71-81/p. 74.

31 Zeyno Baran, “Eu Energy Security: Time to End Russian Leverage”, The Washington Quarterly, vol. 30, no. 4, 2007, pp. 131-144/p. 133.



29

benefits, whether national prosperity and subsequent electoral effects, such incentives severely decreased the appetite of some Western government to antagonize Moscow over its energy interests in the Caspian region and, eventually acted as conceptual catalysts for the cartelization and collusion of EU energy market and, subsequently of EU energy security policy of the late 2000s.

Several visible manifestation of the phenomenon were recorded in the cases of Russia’s paramount designs North Stream and South Stream which managed to coagulate an informal, Kremlin-led cartel of interests within the European Union (comprising Germany, Netherlands, France, Italy and Moscow’s traditional allies within EU, Bulgaria and Greece) and which led, more or less, to the erection of an energetic Iron Curtain on the EU territory, as both transit routes were designed in order to circumvent the territories of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Romania and the Baltic States, the most vocal opponents of Kremlin’s approach to use Gazprom’s monopoly as an energetic weapon. In particular, notes Grazioli, Poland and the Baltic states went as far as openly accusing Berlin (Moscow’s key-advocate in the EU) that its privileged deal with Moscow over North Stream pipeline represents a modern variation of the Ribbentrop-Molotov Pact32 with dramatic effects for the future of the EU security. Subsequently, on June 23, 2007 Gazprom and ENI (Italy) signed the memorandum to construct South Stream pipeline – a hydrocarbon transport corridor from the Caspian region to Europe – and addressed invitations to Nabucco participants33 to join Russian-led project34, revealing the inchoate and volatile nature of EU’s rhetoric in regard to its energy diversification strategy and energy solidarity perspective in front of Moscow’s divide et impera approach.

Moreover, in order to secure Gazprom’s monopoly on the EU market, Kremlin managed to secure – through its energy entities – important share packages of various European energy companies whose portfolio of assets and services included management of energy infrastructure, energy deposits, port infrastructure, transportation and distribution networks or other energetic assets35, while bound Central Asian gas producers to sell a large amount of their

32 Stefano Grazioli, “L’asse Mosca-Berlino È Il Perno Del Continente”, Limes, 2008,

http://limes.espresso.repubblica.it/2008/05/13/lasse-mosca-berlino-e-il-perno-del-continente/?p=617, [accessed January 13, 2014], p.111

33 With the exception of Romania all other participant countries In the Nabucco pipeline project reconsidered their strategic energy priorities and decided to take part into the development of South Stream transport pipeline. Left out of South Stream’s energetic geometry, Bucharest began negotiations to participate in the still-nascent White Stream project, backed by Azerbaijan, Ukraine, Poland and Lithuania.

34 Erkan Erdogdu, “Bypassing Russia…cit.”, p. 12. 35 Steven Woehrel, “Russian Energy Policy toward Neighboring Countries”. Congressional

Research Service RL34261 - CRS Report for Congress of United States of America, Washington DC, 2009, p. 2; Eduard Rudolf Roth, “The Limits of Gazpromization”, cit., p. 74.

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


30

gas production to Gazprom36 . In particular, it is worth noting that – due to this modus operandi – Gazprom, Rosneft and Transneft (state owned companies) and LUKoil (private company) began to play such active role in the implementation of Russia’s foreign policy, that – claims Lo – sometimes their importance even surpassed that of the Russian Federation Ministry of Foreign Affairs37. The key dimension behind the cartelization of the EU energy security policy derives, contrary to the Russian energetic superpower thesis38 – picturing a restaurationist and neo-imperialist Kremlin39 that achieves political objectives through its coercive or rewarding energy policy40 – from Russia’s severe structural, political and economic weaknesses which it was forced to conceal in order to secure itself the international acceptance of its ascending power projection in the topography of a future multipolar world41 More specifically, by mid 2000s, Russian energy sector reached a plateau level in oil production – Western Siberia fields became unable to yield the incremental production, recorded significant downsize in all Gazprom’s major production fields Urengoy, Yamburg, Medvezhye, Nadym și Pur-Tazovskoye42 and faced a severe increase of the domestic consumption levels. Moreover, the limited development of the new Sakhalin hydrocarbon fields and the insignificant progress recorded in the development of the extraction and transport infrastructure in Eastern Siberia, Far East and Arctic offshore regions forced Moscow to look abroad in order to compensate the shortages in oil and gas volumes required in order to supply its domestic and external customers. Due to these aspects, Kremlin was forced to operate not from the position of an

36 Erkan Erdogdu, “Bypassing Russia…cit.”, p. 13. 37 Bobo Lo, Russia’s Crisis – What It Means for Regime Stability and Moscow’s Relations

with the World, Centre for European Reform, London, 2009, p. 139. 38 Fiona Hill, Energy Empire: Oil, Gas and Russia’s Revival, The Foreign Policy Centre,

London, 2004, p. 1. 39 Vladimer Papava, Michael Tokmazishvili, “Russian Energy Politics and the EU: How

to Change the Paradigm”, Caucasian Review of International Affairs, vol. 4, no. 2, 2010, pp. 103-111/p. 104.

40 Marshall Goldman, Putin, Power and the New Russia Petrostate, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2008, p. 2; Anita Orban, Power, Energy, and the New Russian Imperialism, Praeger Security International, Westport CT, 2008, p. 5; Julianne Smith, The NATO-Russia Relationship: Defining Moment or Déjà Vu, Center for Strategic and International Studies and L'Institut Français des Relations Internationales, Washington DC and Paris, 2008, p. 12; Margarita Balmaceda, Energy Dependency, Politics and Corruption in the Former Soviet Union: Russia's Power, Oligarch's Profits and Ukraine's Missing Energy Policy, 1995-2006, Routledge, London, 2008, p. 23; Peter Rutland, “Russia as an Energy Superpower”, New Political Economy, vol. 13, no. 2, 2008, pp. 203-210/p. 203.

41 Eduard Rudolf Roth, “The Limits of Gazpromization”, cit., pp. 75-78. 42 Michael Gonchar, Vitali Martyniuk, Olena Prystayko, “2009 Gas Conflict and Its

Consequences for European Energy Security”, EU-Rusia Centre Review, vol. 1, no. 9, 2009, pp. 30-47/p. 31.



31

energetic superpower, but from a position of incertitude, generated by its dire hydrocarbon deficit43 and therefore constrained to strengthen its influence in the Caspian44 and to control Kazakh, Azerbaijani and Turkmen oil and gas production45 and regional export routes46 by any means. Analysed through these conceptual lenses, the Russian-Ukrainian energy crises of 2006 and 2009 and the 2008 Russian-Georgian war – regularly portrayed as manifestations of Moscow’s exercise of authority in its near abroad, in order to define and cement its spheres of influence and most of all to project its great power identity in order to claim a major spot within a mutating global geometry – gain a different weight. Ukrainian crises, for instance, were fuelled – at least partially – by Gazprom’s impossibility to deliver enough gas to cover the skyrocketing domestic and foreign demands during the anomalous cold winters of 2006 and 2009. In particular – confronted with both technical issues (condensation) or quantity issues (hydrocarbon deficit and low pressure), Gazprom operates regular reductions of its delivery towards Europe during winters, with the unfriendly or cheap customers being the first ones to be targeted by the curtails.

Moreover, placed in the hydrocarbon deficit framework, the crises could be linked with Kremlin’s organic need to discredit both Ukraine and Georgia as transit countries, to deal a serious blow to all gas transport projects that were circumventing its distribution network (White Stream and Nabucco) or, according to Fraser, to accelerate the construction of its own gas transport corridors North Stream and South Stream47. However, the idea that behind Moscow’s actions lies the need to recalibrate the profits of various groups of interests which control de energy companies and which had their revenues reduced due to the incidence of the global financial crisis48 cannot be discounted.

Another key-point related to Russia’s energy policy is whether Kremlin’s strategic documents and behavioural dynamics – arguably calibrated with the energetic superpower thesis – and its energy-related persuasion arsenal are realistically dimensioned. And the answer is that Moscow’s “blackmailing” toolbox is extremely limited due to severe structural deficiencies. For instance, Moscow’s constant threats that it would reroute its gas (and oil) fluxes towards

43 Eduard Rudolf Roth, “The Limits of Gazpromization”, cit., p. 77. 44 Julia Nanay, “Russia’s Role in the Eurasian Energy Market: Seeking Control in the Face

of Growing Challenges”, in Robert W. Orttung, Jeronim Perović, Andreas Wenger (eds.), Russian Energy Power and Foreign Relations: Implications for Conflict and Cooperation, Taylor & Francis, London, 2009, p. 109-132.

45 Yannis Tsantoulis, “Geopolitics, (Sub)Regionalism, Discourse and a 'Troubled Power' Triangle in the Black Sea”, in Dimitrios Triantaphyllou (ed.), The Security Context in the Black Sea Region, Routledge, New York, 2010, p. 29.

46 Eduard Rudolf Roth, “The Limits of Gazpromization”, cit., p. 77. 47 Cameron Fraser, “The Politics of EU-Russia Energy Relations”, EU-Rusia Centre

Review, vol. 1, no. 9, 2009.pp. 20-29/p. 22. 48 Bobo Lo, Russia’s Crisis…cit., p. 5.

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


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China have only a rhetorical value. In practice, the absence of a distribution network, the lack of investment, the lack of political incentives, the geographical positioning of the major operational Russian gas and oil fields prevent the occurrence of serious mutations within the current energy equation. Russia’s accelerated involvement (and investment) in the development of Eastern Siberia and Far East energy projects – is triggered not only by economic, but also by security constraints. In particular, Russia is forced to secure an economic partnership with China, not only because the latter is supporting and implementing some sort of a politico-economical encirclement, but also in order to avoid a possible exploitation by Beijing of Russia’s economic and demographic vulnerability in its Far East Region and provinces, where - according to the Japan’s Institute for Research Development – live only 7.2 million permanent residents, most of them of oriental cultural and genetic heritage – and where the secessionist trend – labelled as a “threat to the national security” by ex-president Putin49 (seems to have been galvanized by the eruption of the international crisis50.

Under these circumstances, Romanian-Russian relations evolved as an asymmetrical by-product of the structural mutations and overlapping patterns of interests that shaped the topography of the region, especially in a Brussels-Washington-Moscow triad of divergences and, to a certain extent, of the common denominator binding various energy groups with a high politics agenda from Russia, EU and US. In particular, the deterioration of the political relations between Kremlin and the White House allowed Romania to exhibit its superior external action potential conferred by US’s support for its policies and perspectives – yet without any of its endeavours, projects and initiatives (Black Sea Forum, Nabucco hydrocarbon transport pipeline, the internationalization of the ‘frozen conflicts’ neighbouring the Black Sea, etc.) – being able to evolve into a fully fledged foreign policy deliverable and thus to lead to the marginalization and the diminishing of Moscow’s influence in the region or to the transformation of Romania into a regulating player in the Wider Black Sea Area. In response, Moscow boycotted all Romanian initiatives aimed to reshape the Wider Black Sea institutional architecture and recalibrated its hydrocarbon prices in order to capture the deterioration of the bilateral relations. In addition, according to some proponents of the external subversion thesis – like for instance Tudoroiu (2008) – Moscow was the driving force behind the failed 2007 parliamentary impeachment that targeted the pro-American President Traian Băsescu with the allegedly Kremlin-orchestrated plot being supported

49 Nina Poussenkova, “All Quiet on the Eastern Front”, Russian Analytical Digest no. 33,

no. 8, 2008, pp. 13-18/p. 13. 50 Christina Lin, The Prince of Rosh: Russian Energy Imperialism and the Emerging

Eurasian Military Alliance of the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation, ISPSW Institut für Strategie- Politik- Sicherheits- und Wirtschaftsberatung Berlin, Germany, 2010, p. 7.



33

and implemented with the help with the indigenous oligarchs due to converging interests between Russian and Romanian energy groups with important political influence51. Support for this claim – argues Tudoroiu – can be found in the fact that week before the vote on president’s suspension, Romanian Prime Minister Călin Popescu Tăriceanu – Băsescu’s arch-enemy and a figure closely connected with Romanian energy groups with a high politics agenda – met Aleksandr Kondyakov, a person allegedly well connected with the Kremlin administration. More or less in the same period, argues the author, Romania’s most important hydrocarbon oligarch and Prime Minister’s close partner and sponsor Dinu Patriciu issued a series of pro-Russian statements, for only shortly after to sell its 75% of his energy company Rompetrol to the Kazakh state-owned KazMunai Gaz (placed, according to Tudoroiu, in Gazprom’s spheres of influence) in a US$ 2.7 billion deal52. Of note, although it can be reasonably accepted that Tudoroiu’s hypothesis cannot be completely discounted, the author’s attempt to explain his observation remains extremely speculative, as – in a later statement - even President Basescu himself admitted that Kodyakov, represented rather private business stakes and not Moscow’s interests53 and that other factors (discounted by Tudoroiu) might have played a major role in the process and in the unfolding of the events.

However, the return of Băsescu to his leading foreign policy authority role – after the failed referendum – coincided with a gradually decreasing magnitude of Moscow’s antagonization in the incumbent President’s discourse, up to a formal normalization of the rhetoric by the spring of 200854 and with a rejuvenation of Bucharest’s vocal support for the arguments put forward by Washington for giving Georgia and Ukraine’s immediate NATO membership action plans55. The US proposal – backed up by the UK and the anti-Russian

51 Theodor Tudoroiu, “From Spheres of Influence to Energy Wars: Russian Influence in Post-

Communist Romania”, Journal of Communist Studies and Transition Politics, vol. 24, no. 3, 2008, pp. 386-414/p. 498.

52 Ibidem, pp. 406-408. 53 Traian Băsescu, Romania Libera Newspaper, July, 23, 2012 http://www.romanialibera.

ro/politica/institutii/interviu-rl-cu-traian-basescu--ce-crede-presedintele-suspendat-despre-legatura-dintre-inlaturarea-sa-si-cea-de-a-doua-vizita-in-romania-a-rusului-kondyakov-271276 [Accessed February 23, 2015] [accessed January 13, 2014].

54 Ziare.com, April 4, 2008, http://www.ziare.com/basescu/presedinte/basescu-numai-lapte-si-miere-cu-putin-281945 [accessed January 13, 2014].

55 Traian Băsescu, Bursa Magazine, April 2, 2008, http://www.bursa.ro/romania-sustine-extinderea-nato-in-balcanii-de-vest-si-in-spatiul-ex-sovietic5267&s=print&sr=articol&id_ articol=25267.html; [accessed January 13, 2014]; Ileana Mădălina Racheru. “Teme de politica externă a României. Relațiile bilaterale România-Georgia (2004-2009), Sfera Politicii, no. 139, 2009, http://www.sferapoliticii. ro/sfera/139/art11-racheru.html [accessed January 13, 2014]; Hotnews News Agency, http://www.hotnews.ro/stiri-politic-4048492-traian-basescu-romania-sustine-acordarea-map-ului-pentru-georgia-ucraina-reuniunea-ministrilor-externe-nato-din-decembrie.htm [accessed January 13, 2014].

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH


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axis of the EU (Poland, Romania, Baltic States) – failed to be crystalized into an official agreement during NATO’s 2008 Bucharest Summit, especially due to the lack of support of some EU states, mainly France and Germany, not eager to provoke Russia in any way56.

The discernible deepening of the transatlantic rift – arguably fetishized to some extent by Kremlin masterminds – appeared to signal the opening of a window of opportunity for keeping the US at the periphery or even out of the Caspian power and energy topographies57 – while shaping a power architecture circumscribed to Kremlin’s projections, namely with EU’s benign presence in the West and with its own hegemonic domination in Eurasia58. In this context, not only that Kremlin’s behavioural dynamics hinted that US’s “influence in its near abroad is no longer welcomed”59, but also began to manifest pseudo-hegemonic symptoms in order to signal the change that appeared to have occurred in the regional balance of power and which culminated with its actions during the 2008 Russian-Georgian War60. NATO and EU’s reactions of not expressing a firm condemnation of the Russian military intervention – although, nominally, Baltic States, Poland and Sweden had extremely vocal responses – induced the idea that Western support for Georgia was rather hollow and that the states situated in Russia’s neighbourhood should re-evaluate their ways of dealing with Kremlin in the future.

To some extent, seen from Bucharest, Russian invasion of Georgia and the recognition of South Ossetia and Abkhazia were predictable collateral effects of US/EU’s recognition of Kosovo’s independence, perfectly circumscribed to Romania’s refusal rhetoric associated with its decision not to align itself along the same political line with Washington and Brussels over the Kosovo issue, a stand which – according to Bitkova – marked Bucharest’s first derailment from its traditional loyalty matrix towards NATO’s actions in the Balkans since late 1990s61.

56 Carol Weaver, The Politics of the Black Sea Region…cit., p. 18. 57 Elkhan Nuriyev, The South Caucasus at the Crossroads: Conflicts, Caspian Oil and

Great Power Politics, Lit Verlag, Berlin, 2007, p. 113. 58 Craig Nation, Dmitri Trenin, Russian Security Strategy under Putin: US and Russian

Perspectives, Strategic Studies Institute, Carlisle PA, 2007, p. 4. 59 Yannis Tsantoulis, “Geopolitics, (Sub)Regionalism, Discourse…cit.”, p. 29. 60 Of note, argue Notion and Trenin, Russia’s military intervention on Georgian territory

shouldn’t be conceptualized as a revamping by Kremlin of former USSR’s military doctrine and strategic thinking, but rather as a recalibration of Moscow’s perspectives along the lines of the pre-World War I “ruthless strategic competition among nations”, which attributed the status of reasonable foreign policy tool to the use of force and more generally, to war. Craig Nation, Dmitri Trenin, Russian Security Strategy under Putin…cit., pp. 35-36.

61 Tatiana Bitkova, “The Place of Romania and Russia in the Context of East-West Relations: Political and Cultural Aspects”, Romanian Review of Political Sciences and International Relations, vol.11, no. 2, 2014, pp. 44-52/p. 49.



35

Moreover, through the same conceptual lenses, the Russian-Georgian war had a relatively critical dimension: first of all, because similar uses of the Kosovo precedent could have been employed by Kremlin in the cases of Transnistria and Ukraine, situations engulfing major threats to Romania’s security and having the potential of dragging Bucharest in an armed conflict, and secondly because Russian control over South Ossetian oil hub would have undermined of Romania’s chances to maximize its role in the hydrocarbon transport projects linking the Caspian Region with Europe. In the case of a de jure secession of the breakaway Georgian province, noted Papakostas, the “flow of oil resources that would enter In the European mainland through Romanian ground” would have been interrupted62. In this context, not only that Romania has sent the biggest team of observers in the EU Civil Monitoring Mission in Georgia63, but it indulged Brussels to “acquire a more proactive role in the peacekeeping and peace building processes” in the frozen-conflicts bordering the Black Sea64 and became one of the main advocates of granting MAP status to Tbilisi, at the Lisbon 2010 NATO Summit.

Moreover, aware of the high political barriers standing in the way of Nabucco’s future, Romanian administration focused on the development of a less ambitious, yet easier to be implemented energy project – the AGRI interconnector – a transport solution for supplying liquefied Azeri gas from Georgian port of Kulevi to Romanian port of Constanta. In this sense, at the end of a year of year of trilateral negotiations, Tbilisi, Baku and Bucharest signed in 2010 a memorandum that aimed at attaining the necessary framework for the project.

Romania’s behavioural dynamics towards Wider Black Sea Area, the constant diatribes against Russia’s energy practices (especially in the discourse of Romanian President Traian Basescu) and of a higher importance, Bucharest’s successful attempt in involving Western structures in the management of Moldova’s social, political, economic and security problems, generated significant concerns in Moscow65 and triggered a series of reactions from Kremlin, especially through economic gestures66, under the form of retaliatory, coercive prices for Gazprom’s exports to Romania. Under these circumstances, the end of the 2000s would find the two states in a complete standstill67.

62 Nikolaus El. Papakostas, Romanian Foreign Policy Post Euro-Atlantic Accession…cit., p. 22. 63 Ștefan Georgescu, Marilena Munteanu, Tabriz Garayev, Costel Stanca, “The Importance

of Relations between Georgia and Romania for the Progress of Energy Projects”, Constanta Maritime University Annals, vol. 18, no. 2, 2012, pp. 283-289/p. 284.

64 Nikolaus El. Papakostas, Romanian Foreign Policy Post Euro-Atlantic Accession…cit., p. 22. 65 Tatiana Bitkova, “The Place of Romania and Russia in the Context of East-West

Relations…cit.”, pp. 44-52/p. 51. 66 Ruxandra Ivan, “Black Sea Regional Leadership…cit.”, p. 167. 67 Simona Soare, “Still Talking Past Each Other: Romanian–Russian Relations”, Russian

Analytical Digest, vol.1, no. 125, 2013, pp. 14-18/p. 15.

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36

Brussels’ low appetence for hard foreign policy approaches and the apparent lack of impetus in challenging Russia over its energy and military monopoly in the Black Sea Region, left Romania in the same foreign policy stance as in the pre-accession period and namely looking towards Washington in order to consolidate its security and achieve its foreign policy outcomes. As a result, in February 2010 – Romania announced that it will host components of Washington’s anti-ballistic missile system (ABMS) or “missile shield” in Central and Eastern Europe68 a decision that made the relations with Russia take “another turn towards the inimical”69.

Moscow’s 2014 annexation of Crimea and Kremlin’s continuous destabilization of Kiev’s authority, sovereignty and territorial integrity – which arguably occurred in context characterized by a rather gradual shrinking of EU’s security commitments towards the region – found Romania in a relatively complex situation. On one hand, with Washington taking the lead against Moscow over its actions in Ukraine – within a North Atlantic institutional frame marked by normative collisions and political divisions regarding NATO’s reactions towards Kremlin – Bucharest made a stand for superior military capabilities to be deployed on its territory in order to ensure its security70 while, on another tried to use EU’s institutional capabilities in order to prevent the contagion of the Ukraine crisis in Moldova (a state which Bucharest aims to keep within its spheres of influence). Moreover, despite the establishment’s mild rhetoric against a Russian “aggression” and “destabilization”71, passing the redline of international law72, Bucharest’s behavioural patterns reveal the adoption of a strategy of avoidance and buck-passing, in which the – arguably theoretical – burden of confronting Kremlin was passed to Washington and Brussels73, yet aware that whatever modest US in the region and EU’s conceptual support for Ukraine won’t justify a confrontation with Moscow in its “near abroad”, a region of vital interest for Russia.

68 Carol Weaver, The Politics of the Black Sea Region…cit., p. 18. 69 Simona Soare, “Still Talking Past Each Other…cit.”, pp. 14-18/p. 15. 70 Agence France Press, News Agency Report ‒ Romania Presses for NATO Redeployment

over Ukraine Crisis, http://www.afp.com/en/news/romania-presses-nato-redeployment-over-ukraine-crisis [accessed January 13, 2014].

71 Traian Băsescu, Libertatea Newspaper, August 28, 2014, http://www.libertatea.ro/detalii /articol/traian-basescu-rusia-putin-ucraina-transnistria-505270.html [accessed January 13, 2014].

72 Klaus Johannis, Digi 24 Television, February 6, 2015 http://www.digi24.ro/Stiri/ Digi24/Actualitate/ Politica/Klaus+Iohannis+Rusia+a+depasit+linia+rosie [accessed January 13, 2014].

73 Traian Băsescu, Gandul Newspaper, March 6, 2014, http://www.gandul.info/ politica/criza-din-ucraina-in-consiliul-european-basescu-ceea-ce-a-facut-federatia-rusa-este-o-agresiune-daca-se-decide-un-format-de-negociere-romania-trebuie-sa-fie-parte-12207632 [accessed January 13, 2014].



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Conclusions

The primary conclusion of this analytical rendition of Romania’s

foreign policy dynamics towards the Wider Black Sea Area in the period 2007-2010 is that a large part of Bucharest’s portfolio of foreign policy deliverables and paramount designs engulfing the region – like the securitization of a regulatory role for itself in the Black Sea area, the increase of its control over the regional development infrastructure, the development of a security cooperation dimension within the existent cooperation framework and the development of a hydrocarbon transport corridor from the Caspian to Europe bypassing Russia – were, in fact, by-products generated by a divergent interplay of exogenously articulated influences (primarily of US and Russian and secondary of EU origins) and by the subsequent projections of Washington’s (and to a lesser extent, Brussels’) heterochthonous regional perspectives, preferences and interests, which Bucharest transposed into its foreign policy agenda, with the anticipation that it would be rendered the main promoter or implementer.

The indigenous hybridizing of an imported (mostly) transatlantic and European policy agendas for the Wider Black Sea Area wasn’t however tributary to an organic development and transformation of the post-Communist Romanian political and economic spectra, but rather as a incidental side effect of the recurrent autochthonous establishments’ attempts to enhance the country’s status and allure in the West, during a timeframe when the US and EU seemed to manifest an apparent interest in the region.

Cartelization of EU’s energy policy, colliding interests between patronage-based hydrocarbon oligarchies and business circles with high political agendas, Russia’s hydrocarbon deficit, the overestimation of Washington’s and Brussels’ interests in the Wider Black Sea Area and the arguably illusory perspective regarding member states commitments to support a EU-wide energy solidarity, were the utmost factors that affected Bucharest’s foreign policy and triggered substantial mutations in its behavioural dynamics towards the region.

Moreover, in the post-accession period, when Bucharest eventually began to use the superior institutional capacities for foreign policy design and formulation, it started to upload its previously-constructed Americanized foreign policy perspectives regarding the Wider Black Sea Area into EU’s institutional framework. In particular, with EU (especially France and Germany) manifesting both a lack of appetite for hard foreign policy approaches and a lack of motivation, of political and o institutional impetus for challenging Russia’s regional or energy hegemony, Romania’s endeavours led to extremely modest results and, to some extent, to the isolation of Bucharest (and of other actors with similar agendas) at the periphery of Brussels’ foreign policy profile.

Is European Union Law a Fully

Self-Contained Regime? A Theoretical Inquiry of the Functional Legal Regimes in the Context of Fragmentation of

International Law1

LIANA ANDREEA IONIȚĂ

SETTING THE SCENE

At a time when the European Union is remodelling its institutional and legal architecture, as well as its borders, and redefining its priorities, identity and role in the international arena, this article aims to analyze to what extent the EU legal order constitutes a separate field of law, evolving towards a special legal regime or even a self-contained regime.

An inquiry into the legal nature of the EU implies two perspectives of analysis, depending on the „level-of analysis problem”2: first of all, the analysis through the lens of international lawyers viewpoint and then, the analysis through the lens of EU lawyers perception. In the first case, if we look at the works of Dupuy3, Jan Klabbers4 or Nollkaemper5, we notice that the supremacy of international law prevails over any kind of legal regime and EU is seen as an international organization. However, in the second case, while building their arguments on the sui generis nature of EU and its legal particularities, scholars

1 This paper is supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme Human Resources

Development (SOP HRD), financed from the European Social Fund and by the Romanian Government under the contract number POSDRU/159/1.5/133675.

2 J.D. Singer, “The Level- of- Analysis Problem in International Relations”, K. Knorr, S. Verba (eds.), The International System: Theoretical Essays, Princeton University Press, Princeton, 1961, p. 77.

3 See, Pierre-Marie Dupuy, “Fragmentation du droit international ou des perceptions qu’on en a?”, EUI Working Papers, no. 14, 2006.

4 See, Jan Klabbers, Treaty Conflict and the European Union, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2009.

5 See, Andre Nollkaemper, “Rethinking the Supremacy of International Law”, Amsterdam Center for International Law Working Paper, 2009.



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and EU lawyers, like J.H.H. Weiler6, Piet Eeckout7, Bruno de Witte8, Gráinne de Búrca9 or K.S. Ziegler10, argue the increasing autonomy of this new EU legal order of international law.

Considering the outlines of these two intellectual debates, the article will answer to the following research question: Is European Union law a potential candidate for autonomous legal systems disconnected from general international law ‒ the so-called self-contained regimes? Pro et contra arguments.

My contention is that, even though EU law is not totally decoupled from general principles of international law, the new legal order of the EU has taken a historical turn towards self-containedness. In order to demonstrate this hypothesis, I will first look at the characteristics of self-contained regimes in the light of the debate on the fragmentation of international law (Section I) and then I will engage in an attempt to build pro et contra arguments in order to explain the historical turn of EU legal regime towards self-containedness (Section II).

The methodological approach consists in providing a critical analysis, from an interdisciplinary point of view – political science, law and international relations ‒, of the Report on Fragmentation of International Law of the International Law Commission, concluded in 2006 and the ECJ case law in order to identify and explain pro et contra arguments, both in favour and against the following assertion: although EU law is not totally decoupled from general principles of international law, the new legal order of the EU has taken a historical turn towards self-containedness.

The corpus of empirical studies on the European legal system is nowadays remarkably extensive, specialized and largely sophisticated. Nevertheless, EU is still a fertile laboratory for the research. The main focus of this article is to investigate from an interdisciplinary stance – political science, international relations and law ‒ a subject that is relatively new and innovative for the evolution of the EU legal scholarship. Aiming to explain the evolution of EU law towards a self-contained regime in international law, this article takes

6 See, J.H.H. Weiler, The Constitution of Europe: “Do the New Clothes Have an

Emperor?” and Other Essays on European Integration, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1999.

7 See, P. Eeckhout, EU External Relations Law, 2nd ed., Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011; P. Eeckhout, A. Biondi, S. Ripley (eds.), EU Law After Lisbon, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012.

8 See, Bruno de Witte, “‘Rules of Change in International Law: How Special is the European Community?”, Netherlands Yearbook of International Law, XXV, 1994, pp. 299-333.

9 See, Paul Craig, Gráinne de Burca (eds.), The Evolution of EU Law, 2nd ed, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2011.

10 See, Katja S. Ziegler, “International Law and EU Law: Between Asymmetric Constitutionalisation and Fragmentation”, in A. Orakhelashvili (ed.), Research Handbook on the Theory of International Law, Edward Elgar Publishing, Cheltenham, 2011, pp. 268-327.

Is European Union Law a Fully Self-Contained Regime?


41

on the debate on the fragmentation of international law11, which represents the framework within which different features of modern law-making have been developed.

According to the United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) Report on “Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law” (hereinafter the “ILC Report”), the background of fragmentation of international law has its roots in the globalization process, which has led to “the emergence of specialized and relatively autonomous spheres of social action and structure”12. All these transformations have caused legal effects and implications in the field of law, which, in order to respond to technical and functional needs and preferences of the actors, have led to the emergence of new types of specialized (quasi) autonomous law. Therefore,

“what once appeared to be governed by ‘general international law’ has

become the field of operation for such specialist systems as ‘trade law’, ‘human rights law’, ‘environmental law’, ‘law of the sea’, ‘European law’ and even such exotic and highly specialized knowledges as ‘investment law’ or ‘international refugee law’ etc.- each posing their own principles and institutions”13.

This is the birth of the so-called “self-contained regimes” that are often

referred to as the different specialized branches of international law, whose rate of evolution was directly proportional to the fragmentation phenomenon. Legal scholars have long time debated the question of “self-contained regimes” that are considered to be special legal regimes with its own norms and principles, which operate in an autonomous way vis-à-vis general international law. Even though “strong forms of lex specialis” that are more or less decoupled from the lex generali, these self-contained regimes are not in concreto “closed legal circuits”. Therefore, we can observe that their relationship with the general international law is ubiquitous if we examine from the point of view of the general law of treaties (provided by the Vienna Convention of Law of Treaties of 1969) to which all these regimes have claimed its binding force14.

From the international law perspective and taking into account all mentioned above, one could not agree that EU law is a self-contained regime,

11 ILC Report, Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the

Diversification and Expansion of International Law‒Report of the Study Group of the International Law (Analytical Report) Commission, finalized by Martti Koskenniemi [online], UN Doc. A/CN.4/L.682, 2006, available at http://daccessddsy.un.org/doc /UNDOC/LTD/G06/610/77/PDF/G0661077.pdf?OpenElement (Accessed on 12 September 2013).

12 Ibidem, p. 11. 13 Ibidem. 14 Ibidem, pp. 81-82.



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bearing in mind that the application of general international law is not totally excluded from the EU law. However, from the EU law perspective, there are sufficient characteristics of the EU legal system that qualify it for this category of strong form of lex specialis. Although EU law is not totally decoupled from general international law because of its origins and operation as a regime constituted under the provisions of the general law of treaties, the case law of the Court of Justice of the European Union has firmly declared the “new legal order of international law”15. Regarding the relationship between EU law and international law, the former has developed its domain réservé regarding its independence and participation within the international order, as well as its own norms and rules of recognition, claiming its “own legal system”16, a subsystem of international law. Therefore, one could strongly argue that EU legal regime is likely to appear as self-contained.

SELF-CONTAINED REGIMES IN THE LIGHT OF THE FRAGMENTATION OF INTERNATIONAL LAW

In this section, I will provide some conceptual preliminaries on the development of self-contained regimes in international law. I will first explore why the fragmentation of international law has encouraged the development of such legal regimes and then I will reflect on what they actually constitute by pointing out its historical usages and the current meanings according to contemporary legal scholars.

The United Nations International Law Commission (ILC) has reckoned with this issue in the context of the fragmentation of international law and before further explaining the emergence of the legal regimes, I will address the meaning of this phenomenon. The expanding scope of international law and its tendency to develop specialized techniques have turned into a ubiquitous presence in the international law scholarship throughout the years. The specialization of international law (in particular subject-areas such as human rights, trade, the environment and so on, that have become bodies of law), on one hand, and the expansion of international law (the proliferation of international judicial institutions, organizations, courts and tribunals), on the other hand, have substantially contributed to the fragmentation of international law. These were the major factors responsible for the fragmentation. The study

15 ECJ, Case 26/62, NV Algemene Treansport- en Expenditie Onderneming van Gend en

Loos v. Netherlands Inland Revenue Administration, 5 February 1963 (hereinafter “Case Van Gend en Loos”), p. 2.

16 ECJ, Case 6/64, Flaminio Costa v. ENEL, 15 July 1964 (hereinafter “The Costa v. ENEL Case”), p. 593.



43

of such phenomenon raises fundamental question regarding the unity of international law, its substance and components: how can international law be broken apart if it was not a unitary body of law? But international law has never been a unified system and the lack itself of centralized organs (no centralized legislative body and institutions, no independent authority, no compulsory court system and no centralized enforcement) has made the fragmentation unavoidable.

The more expanded and specialized the international law becomes, the more it “is a victim of its own success”17 and “a cultural and historical product”18 , going through four main phases: the first three identified by David Kennedy ‒ the Treaty of Westphalia, the League of Nations and the UN Charter19 ‒ to which Leathley adds the current phase of globalization20. As we observe “the globalization of international law”21 and the redefinition of the international order within the context of the emergence of international non-state actors, a revolutionary wave resulted in the fall of the classical international law logic and the appearance of different “foyers de droits”22. These „foyers de droits” describe the different legal bodies around specific subject-areas that have been gravitating independently the international system and operating in their own regime of application and interpretation of the international norms and by their own rules and legal practices23. Their tendency is to claim their autonomy from the general principles of international law and become more or less self-contained or self-sufficient.

In 1999, the President of the International Court of Justice, Judge Stephen M. Schwebel, addressed to the United Nations General Assembly on the topic of the proliferation of international tribunals and expressed his concerns that “the proliferation of international courts may jeopardize the unity of international law and, as a consequence, its role in inter-State relations”24. In 2000 and 2001, Gilbert Guillaume (the following President of the International Court of Justice) has raised awareness in his speeches to the UN General Assembly regarding this “postmodern anxiety”25 and pointed out that “judges

17 C. Leathley, “An Institutional Hierarchy to Combat the Fragmentation Of International

Law: Has the ILC Missed an Opportunity?”, New York University Journal of International Law and Politics, vol. 40, no. 1, 2007, p. 263.

18 Emmanuelle Jouannet, Le droit International, PUF, Paris, 2013, p. 7. 19 David Kennedy, “The Disciplines of International Law and Policy”, Leiden Journal of

International Law, vol. 12, no. 1, 1999, pp. 83-101. 20 C. Leathley, “An Institutional Hierarchy… cit.”, p. 264. 21 Alain Pellet, “Vers une mondialisation du droit international?”, in La Mondialisation au-

delà des mythes, S. Cordelier & al. (eds), La Découverte, Paris, 2000, pp. 93-100. 22 J. Chevallier, L’Etat postmoderne, LGDJ, Paris, 2004, p. 4. 23 Emmanuelle Jouannet, Le droit International, cit., pp. 56-69. 24 Stephen M. Schwebel, Address to the Plenary Session of the General Assembly of the UN, 1999. 25 Martti Koskenniemi, P. Leino, “Fragmentation of International Law? Postmodern

Anxieties”, Leiden Journal of International Law, vol. 15, no. 3, 2002, pp. 553-579.



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themselves must realize the danger of fragmentation in the law, and even conflicts of case-law, born of the proliferation of courts”26. This is the first time that the phenomenon of fragmentation is mentioned and officially recognized and ever since, it became the new research approach embraced by most legal scholars and international lawyers when defining the international legal order. The ILC established in 2002 a Study Group, which was chaired by Professor Martti Koskenniemi. This Study Group has conducted a research on this topic and issued in 2006 a final report on the “Fragmentation of International Law: Difficulties Arising from the Diversification and Expansion of International Law” (the ILC Report). According to this Report, there are very important effects that have emerged naturally with this phenomenon: fragmentation has challenged the coherence of the international legal system and has led to conflicts between international norms and different interpretations. Therefore, the ILC Report addresses the topic from the point of view of the emergence of special law (lex specialis) as exception to the general law, by analyzing the conflicts between specialized norms of different legal regimes and general international law and between different types of special law27.

The most important problem that arises with the fragmentation of international law and creates incoherence is “the splitting up of the law into highly specialized ‘boxes’ that claim relative autonomy from each other and from the general law”28. These are the so called “self-contained regimes” or “special regimes”.

Taking into consideration the technical and functional rationalities, new forms of lex specialis have developed more and more in different domains of law, such as trade law, human rights law, environmental law, EU law and so on, on one hand; on the other hand, we have faced the proliferation of specific international courts and tribunals that have embodied the political will of certain groups of States29, regionally or internationally established (for example the International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, Court of Justice of the EU, European Court of Human Rights, International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes, International Arbitration Tribunal for the Law of the Sea).

In Koskenniemi’s Report, self-contained regimes are defined as strong forms of lex specialis30 and “systems or subsystems of rules that cover some particular problem differently from the way it would be covered under general law”31. Their raison d’être is the specialization of the law in specific domains, following the preferences of their members, in order “to provide a more

26 Gilbert Guillaume, Address to the Plenary Session of the General Assembly of the UN, 2000. 27 ILC Report, pp. 30-101. 28 Ibidem, p. 13. 29 C. Leathley, “An Institutional Hierarchy… cit.”, pp. 264-265. 30 ILC Report, p. 80. 31 Ibidem, p. 68.



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effective protection for certain interests or to create a more context-sensitive regulation of a matter than what is offered under the general law”32.

Self-contained regimes are perceived like “sub-species of regimes”33, which from the point of view of Krasner’s regime theory, are “sets of implicit or explicit principles, norms, rules, and decision-making procedures around which actors’ expectations converge in a given area of international relations”34. If the self-contained regime is understood as a self-sufficient regime, “independent of external means or relations” and “complete in itself”35, this idea would imply that this kind of international regime would be totally isolated from general international law. Three observations are in place. Firstly, if in theory such regime could exist hermetically isolated from general law, however, in practice there is no sign of its existence in concreto. Secondly, from an international law perspective, there is no regime that could be labelled as “self-contained” because it has not formed “a closed legal circuit”36. Even though in its sphere of application prevails its own rules (lex specialis), these should be interpreted as exceptions from the general law and therefore, in a limited way. Thirdly, as ILC has already concluded, every self-contained or special regime links up to general international law, at least regarding the two following aspects:

“First, it [general international law] provides the normative background

that comes in to fulfill aspects of its [self-contained regime’s] operations not specifically provided by it. […] Second, the rules of general law also come to operate if the special regime fails to function properly. […] Also the rules of State responsibility might be relevant in such situations”37.

All in all, these legal regimes are not hermetically isolated from general

international law because their creation, conditions of validity and operation, as well as the rules on State responsibility are still determined by principles of general law. Therefore, taking into consideration all above, the ILC Report mentioned that “self-contained regimes” could be misleading and even suggested that the term of “special regime” could better characterize the current situation. The conceptualization of the term of “self-contained regimes” in the legal discourse was coined by two very important judgments of the International Court of Justice38. The term of self-contained regimes entered the

32 Ibidem, p. 97. 33 Math Noortmann, Enforcing International Law: From Self-help to Self-contained

Regimes, Ashgate Publishing Limited, Aldershot, 2005, p. 131. 34 S.D. Krasner (ed.), International Regimes, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, 1983, p. 2. 35 Cf. Online Oxford English Dictionary. 36 ILC Report, p. 82. 37 Ibidem, p. 100. 38 See, PCIJ, Case A-1, S.S. ”Wimbledon” Brittany, France, Italy and Japan c. Germany, 28

June 1923 (hereinafter “ The S.S. Wimbledon Case”); ICJ, Case Concerning United States



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international legal vocabulary first as a concept fixing a problem of treaty interpretation with regard to the relation between primary international obligations, claiming that “the provisions relating to the Kiel Canal in the Treaty of Versailles are therefore self-contained”39. Those provisions were complete in themselves and since there were specific norms (forming a special legal regime) in Article 380 of the Treaty of Peace of Versailles with regard to the Kiel Canal, the other general applicable articles were not to be used or provide any help in the interpretation of those particular norms. Moreover, in the early 1980s, the term was used in the case of secondary norms by the International Court of Justice, which stated through its decision in the Tehran Hostages Case that legal norms of diplomatic law established by the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations are to be applied independently from the international general law of state responsibility:

“The rules of diplomatic law, constitute a self contained regime which, on the one hand, lays down the receiving state’s obligations regarding the facilities, privileges and immunities to be accorded to diplomatic missions and, on the other, foresees their possible abuse by members of the mission and specifies the means at the disposal of the receiving State to counter any such abuse. These means are, by their nature, entirely efficacious”40. International scholars of international law have associated ever since an

increasing level of autonomy to the self-contained regimes. Treaties or set of treaties (forming a specific treaty regime) started to be seen in international law as legal (quasi) autonomous sub-systems which developed their own rules and norms and excluded more or less the application of general international law. Based on the International Court of Justice’ ruling in the 1980s, the definition provided by Bruno Simma and Dirk Pulkowski to the concept of self-contained regime does not refer to any legal subsystem of international law, but it is applied to “particular category of subsystems, namely those that embrace a full, exhaustive and definitive, set of secondary rules”41. Moreover, Simma and Pulkowski agree with the observations of the Report on their modus operandi as forms of “strong lex specialis”, whose main particularity is their tendency to “exclude the application of the general international law on state responsibility, in particular resort to countermeasures by an injured state”42.

Diplomatic and Consular Staff In Tehran United States of America v. Iran, 24 May 1980 (hereinafter “The Tehran Hostages Case”).

39 The S.S. “Wimbledon” Case, pp. 8-9. 40 The Tehran Hostages Case, p. 86. 41 Bruno Simma, Dirk Pulkowski, “Of Planets and the Universe: Self-contained Regimes in

International Law”, European Journal of International Law, vol. 17, no. 3, 2006, p. 493. 42 Ibidem, p. 495.



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According to the ILC Report on Fragmentation of International Law, there are various regimes that are often qualified as self-contained: human rights law, WTO law, European/EU law, humanitarian law, diplomatic law, spatial law and so on43.

IS EUROPEAN UNION LAW A FULLY SELF-CONTAINED REGIME?

The EU law as a self-contained regime is a topic to which scholars haven’t given greater attention in the context of fragmentation of international law. However, the EU sui generis legal system is constantly evolving and facing an increasing degree of autonomy from the general international law and in this context, a discussion regarding its self-containedness needs to be placed at the core of EU law scholarship. This issue is studied from two perspectives. By analogy to Singer´s theory of “the level-of-analysis” applied to the international relations field, we identify pro and contra arguments depending either on the level of public international lawyers and second, or on the level of scholars in EU law. Therefore, I agree with the observations of the ILC´s Special Rapporteur Arangio-Ruiz:

“Generally, the specialists in Community law tended to consider that the system constituted a self-contained regime, whereas scholars of public international law showed a tendency to argue that the treaties establishing the Community did not really differ from other treaties.”44

In Section II, I will first identify the most important arguments both

supporting and denying the self-contained regime of the EU law and then, taking all these into account, I will eventually state and explain my position on the topic.

Arguments Against EU Law as A Self-Contained Regime

Among the contra arguments, the first thing to be considered is the EU’s foundation in the sphere of international law. Therefore, in international law, EU is considered an international organization and has been established under provisions of international law, namely the Vienna Convention on the

43 ILC Report, p. 68. 44 G. Arangio-Ruiz, “Summary Records of the Meetings of the Forty-fourth Session”, ILC

Yearbook, vol. I, 1992, p. 76.



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Law of Treaties on 1969. Thus, EU as a subject of international law has recognized the binding force of the general law of treaties.

The second reason takes into account the omnipresence of general law. Even though the fragmentation of international law has influenced the emergence of different special regimes, the ILC Report stated that “no regime is self-contained”45. If we perceive the set of rules established by self-contained regimes as hermetically isolated from the general law, we would be inclined to affirm that EU law is not a closed legal circuit.

The third argument derives from the previous one and is based on the fact that, according to the ILC Report, “every special regime links up with general international law”46, especially regarding the conditions of validity of its establishment by the founding treaties. Firstly, the EU legal order cannot exist beyond the sphere of international law; the conditions of its operation, its international legal personality and its capacity to act globally derive from general law. Concurring Pellet, Simma and Pulkowski state that from the international law point of view, the EU law is to be considered as a subsystem as long as its operations are not independent from the consent of the states themselves, so that any significant evolution regarding the EU legal system needs the prior approval of EU members47. Moreover, there are cases when the general international law prohibits deviations and that would be the case of rules having the character of jus cogens or even other types of general international norms, like some human rights treaties, that do not permit derogation by way of lex specialis. However, the derogation remains eventually a question of interpretation of the general law48.

The fourth argument denying the full self-contained character of the EU legal system regards the question of international responsibility of the EU Member States. According to the Report, the linkage between the EU regime and the general international law is notable in cases of possible fall-back to the general international law of the state responsibility due to the regime’s failure: “Once a self-contained regime fails, recourse to general law must be allowed”49. Consequently, Simma and Pulkowski have identified two hypothetical scenarios in which “the mechanisms under the EC [European Community] Treaty fail to give effects to the obligations members have assumed under the Treaty”50, which would provoke a fallback to the international rules of state responsibility. First of all, there is the situation regarding the continuous breaches of EU law by a Member State despite the Commission´s recommendations and finally the

45 ILC Report, p. 100. 46 Ibidem, p. 101. 47 Bruno Simma, Dirk Pulkowski, “Of Planets and the Universe…cit.”, p. 516. 48 ILC Report, p. 60. 49 Ibidem, p. 82. 50 Bruno Simma, Dirk Pulkowski, “Of Planets and the Universe…cit.”, pp. 516-517.



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judgment of the Court, when “the only option to induce compliance that remains for the injured state is a fallback on unilateral countermeasures”51. The second scenario regards the state-to-state reparation in case of violation of EU law. Simma and Pulkowski highlight the fact that Member States are entitled to fall back on general rules, including resort to countermeasures in their claim, in the event that the European legal system doesn’t provide an “explicit provision for a mechanism that would allow inter-state claims of reparations” or the existing procedures doesn’t prove efficacious; the authors go beyond this explanation and, revisiting the case law of the ECJ – benefiting from its appointed role as the guardian of the law ‒, propose a solution to be taken into consideration: “Recourse to the rules on state responsibility will not be necessary if the European Court of Justice accepts […] to accommodate inter-state claims for damages within European legal system”52. Taking into consideration the arguments stated above, there are legal scholars53 that claim that EU legal system is not conceptually a fully self-contained regime, since the resort to general rules and principles of international law, like the state responsibility, is not entirely excluded.

Approaches Favoring EU Law as A Self-Contained Regime

It is essential to firstly point out the sui generis character of the EU law in general international law, which would make it plausible to reiterate the European exceptionalism and the unique capacity of the EU to display important legal features into the international field54. I have presented above reasons sustaining the fact that the international law is an integral part of the EU legal order; however, there are limits that prove the complexity of this relationship and from the legal perspective of the EU scholars, the issue of the EU law as a self-contained regime is an essential feature characterizing the relationship between the special set of rules of the EU legal order and the general international law. The sui generis character of the EU law generates

“The extent to which the EC is a self-contained regime, that is, a distinct

system or subsystem of international law whose secondary rules (the rules of change or the rules governing the implementation, operation and amendment of the Treaties) are determined by the regime itself, that is, are special to the

51 Ibidem, 517. 52 Ibidem, p. 518. 53 See, Bruno Simma, Dirk Pulkowski, “Of Planets and the Universe…cit.”; G. Conway,

“Breaches of EC Law and the International Responsibility of Member States”, European Journal of International Law, vol. 13, no. 3, 2002, pp. 679-695.

54 G. Nolte, H.P. Aust, “European Exceptionalism”, Global Constitutionalism, vol. 2, no. 3, 2013, pp. 407-436.



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regime itself and are not simply the application of conventional secondary rules of general public international law”55.

The second argument is the evolution of EU legal system in terms of

autonomy which has passed through various stages in time. Over the centuries, the European construction faced a unique phenomenon and according to J.H.H. Weiler, one of the leading scholars of European law, the EU has advanced in the context of “the breach and alienation from international law and its transformation into a constitutional legal order”56. It has been concluded that the EU legal system has evolved from its international status nascendi of a typical treaty-based system (an international organization) into a European regime, which from the point of view of the legal architecture, its own enforcement and sanctioning powers, special institutional design embodying the legislative, executive and judiciary powers, its multi-level network governance and quasi-federal particularities, is the very picture of nation states.

The establishment of this self-contained regime took place in the context of a set of founding treaties and treaties modifying its legal and institutional design in order to face the complex economic, politic and legal integration process. It was in 1963 that the European Court of Justice (ECJ) declared that the EU (the European Economic Community at that time) was a “new legal order of international law”57. According to Morten Rasmussen, “the key step towards establishing what the court would term ‘a new legal order of international law’ in the judgment had already been made by the member states when they ratified the Treaties of Rome, due to the treaties’ special legal and institutional nature”58. This momentum is the historical turn of the EU law towards self-containedness because the Court’s judgment in the Van Gend en Loos Case has advanced the constitutional direction of the evolution of the EU legal order, “revolutionizing European law”, as Rasmussen has described it59.

The case law of the ECJ has had a valuable contribution to the development of the EU law into such a legal regime. The Court’s reasoning in the Costa v. ENEL Case has advanced the sui generis character of EU legal system in relationship to the general international system:

“By contrast with ordinary international treaties, the EEC [European

Economic Community] treaty has created its own legal system which, on the entry into force of the treaty, became an integral part of the legal systems of the member states and which their courts are bound to apply. [...] creating a

55 G. Conway, “Breaches of EC Law…cit.”, p. 680. 56 J.H.H. Weiler, The Constitution of Europe…cit., p. 293. 57 The Van Gend en Loos Case. 58 Morten Rasmussen, “Revolutionizing European Law: A History of the Van Gend en Loos

Judgment”, International Journal of Constitutional Law, vol. 12, no. 1, 2014, p. 139. 59 Ibidem.



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community of unlimited duration, having its own institutions, its own personality, its own legal capacity and capacity of representation on the international plane”60. The third important argument is touching upon the normative basis of

the EU legal regime, which makes it self-contained – the acquis communautaire of the EU. The experts in EU law, like C. Delcourt and L. Azoulai61, have argued that this concept is rather characterized by ambiguity due to the dynamic character of the EU legal order and its never-ending evolution. The development of the acquis communautaire, which if the corpus of EU law (including treaties, legislation, international agreements, judgments of the ECJ, fundamental rights provisions) from 1958 to date is a significant proof of the fact that the EU self-contained regime has established its own principles, norms and rules in its sphere of application. Therefore, EU law has advanced its own reserved domain and rules of recognition and has built its own “principles of direct effect, supremacy and the doctrine of fundamental rights”, which have “taken place through the interpretative activity of the ECJ and not always with the full support of all Member States”62.

The fourth argument refers to the special relationship of the EU legal order vis-à-vis general international law in the light of the doctrine of exclusive state responsibility. By analogy to the ILC Report’s observations on self-contained regime, we can agree that the EU regime is a special case of lex specialis (that is, like a sort of exception to the general rule), which “take better account of the particularities of the subject-matter to which they relate; […] regulate it more effectively than the general law and follow closely the preferences of their members”63. Therefore, certain international rights and obligations are not applied to the EU law or are applied in a limited way. According to Professor J.H.H. Weiler, the particularities of the EU self-contained regime draw on the fact that special regime’s procedures and rules prevail against the general law, even regarding the state responsibility in international law, along with the principles of reciprocity and countermeasures, in case of infringement of international obligations:

“The Community legal order is a truly self-contained legal regime with no

recourse to the mechanism of state responsibility, at least as traditionally understood, and therefore to reciprocity and countermeasures, even in the case

60 The Costa v. ENEL Case, p. 593. 61 See, C. Delcourt, “The Acquis Communautaire: Has the Concept Had Its Day?”, Common

Market Law Review, vol. 38, no. 4, 2001, pp. 829-870; L. Auzolai, “The Acquis of the European Union and International Organisations”, European Law Journal, vol. 11, no. 2, 2005, pp. 196-231.

62 ILC Report, p. 84. 63 Ibidem, p. 99.



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of actual or potential failure. Without these features, so centric to the classic international legal order, the Community truly becomes something ‘new’”64. By contrast to the hypothesis developed by Simma and Pulkowski and

presented here above, regarding the ultimate recourse to the general public law and to the classical principal of state responsibility in case of various lacunae in EU law, there are a few important aspects to be considered in order to sustain the EU legal regime as self contained. First of all, the Treaty of Lisbon has developed different mechanisms and alternative methods of dispute settlement65, which involve a reasoned opinion from the Commission, with which Member States concerned should comply; otherwise, the matter may be brought before the ECJ for an alleged infringement of obligations under the treaties, or even more, for non-compliance with the Court’s decisions, which in this case will lead to penalty payment, as it is stipulated in the TEU post-Lisbon:

“Article 258

If the Commission considers that a Member State has failed to fulfill an obligation under the Treaties, it shall deliver a reasoned opinion on the matter after giving the State concerned the opportunity to submit its observations. If the State concerned does not comply with the opinion within the period laid down by the Commission, the latter may bring the matter before the Court of Justice of the European Union. Article 260

1. If the Court of Justice of the European Union finds that a Member State has failed to fulfill an obligation under the Treaties, the State shall be required to take the necessary measures to comply with the judgment of the Court.

2. If the Commission considers that the Member State concerned has not taken the necessary measures […], it may bring the case before the Court […]. It shall specify the amount of the lump sum or penalty payment to be paid by the Member State concerned which it considers appropriate in the circumstances.”66

Moreover, the case law of the ECJ has established through a series of

decisions the rejection of the use of important principles of general law, like state responsibility, countermeasures and reciprocity mechanisms, on the basis of the fact that the EU treaties provide all the appropriate remedies in situations where Member States haven’t fulfilled their obligations stipulated under the treaties. Here are some relevant judgments:

64 J.H.H. Weiler, The Constitution of Europe…cit., p. 29. 65 See, Art. 5.2 (g) TEU. 66 See, Art. 258, 260 TEU.



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“ […] it must be pointed out that in no circumstances may the member states rely on similar infringements by other member states in order to escape their own obligations under the provisions of the treaty.”67

“In fact the Treaty is not limited to creating reciprocal obligations between the different natural and legal persons to whom it is applicable, but establishes a new legal order which governs the powers, rights and obligations of the said persons, as well as the necessary procedures for taking cognizance of and penalizing any breach of it. […] Therefore the fact that the Council failed to carry out its obligations cannot relieve the defendants from carrying out theirs.”68

“[…] a Member State may not rely on the fact that other Member States have also failed to perform their obligations in order to justify its own failure to fulfill its obligations under the Treaty […]. In the legal order established by the Treaty, the implementation of Community law by the Member States cannot be made subject to a condition of reciprocity.”69

All these decisions mentioned above explain how the EU has gradually

reached greater autonomy from the international law due to the case law of the ECJ, which proved to be the driving force behind the constituency of the EU’s self-contained regime.

This line of reasoning takes the current analysis to another important argument supporting the thesis statement: the Court’s judgments have contributed to the development of the current special mechanisms and techniques of the EU legal system, acting “as a gatekeeper by regulating the relationship between international law and Community law”70.

In this regard, it is relevant for the present study to take a closer look at the Kadi Case, whose judgment ‒ one of the most controversial and extensively debated in the public sphere ‒ “has been associated with a dualist conception of the interplay between the international and the Union legal order”71. The subject of the Kadi Case is referring to the implementation by the EU of UN Security Council resolution regarding the sanctions (an assets freeze) imposed to a possible supporter of Al-Qaida, who was accused of terrorist acts. Therefore, it has been questioned the primacy of UN law over EU law and possible conflicts that might arise on the basis of the relationship between obligations under

67 ECJ, Joined cases 142 and 143/80, Amministrazione delle Finanze dello Stato v Essevi

Spa and Carlo Salengo, 27 May 1981. 68 ECJ, Joined cases 90/63 and 91/63 Commission of the European Economic Community v

Grand Duchy of Luxembourg and Kingdom of Belgium, 13 November 1964. 69 ECJ, Case C-38/89 Ministère public v Guy Blanguernon, 11 January 1990. 70 Nikos Lavranos,“Protecting European Law from International Law”, European Foreign

Affairs Review, vol. 15, no. 1, 2010, pp. 281-282. 71 Juliane Kokott, Christoph Sobotta, “The Kadi Case – Constitutional Core Values and

International Law – Finding the Balance?”, The European Journal of International Law, vol. 23, no. 4, 2012, pp. 1017.



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Charter of the United Nations and obligations deriving from the EU treaties with which EU Member States have to comply72.

Taking into account the reasoning of the Court, first, in September 2005, before the Court of First Instance (CFI)73, which is a constituent court of the ECJ, and second, in September 2008, before the ECJ itself, the substantial difference between the two separate judgments has determined EU lawyers to argue that the dualist approach could be explained in correlation with the strengthening of the autonomy of EU law74. Gráinne de Búrca has identified, on one hand, the “strong constitutionalist approach” of the first ruling of the CFI, which was based “on the systemic unity of the international legal order and the EU order, and on a hierarchy of legal authority within this integrated system”, and on the other hand, the “strong pluralist approach” of the final ruling of the ECJ, which “presented the European Union as a separate and self-contained system which determines its relationship to the international order in accordance with its own internal values and priorities rather than in accordance with any mutually negotiated principles or norms”75.

Yassin Abdullah Kadi, a Saudi Arabian national, was included in 2001 on a list published by the Sanctions Committee of the United Nations Security Council, among other entities and persons who were associated with Osama bin Laden, Al-Qaeda or the Taliban and whose assets were supposed to be frozen. Kadi has filed a petition to the CFI, in 2001, demanding the annulment of the Regulation 881/2002, adopted by the European Commission in order to implement a series of UNSCR Resolutions related to the freezing of funds, because this Regulation has violated his right to property and to a fair hearing. The first ruling delivered by the CFI76 in 2005 has rejected Kadi’s petition, on the grounds of the stipulations of the Charter of the United Nations and mainly of the Article 103, claiming the prevalence of the members’ obligations under the Charter of the United Nations, to the detriment of any other obligation under an international treaty and convention77. Moreover, in cases related to

72 Brunno Simma, “Universality of International Law from the Perspective of a Practitioner”, The European Journal of International Law, vol. 20, no. 2, 2009, p. 292. See also, The Kadi and Al Barakaat Cases; N. Walker, J. Shaw, S. Tierney, Europe's Constitutional Mosaic, Hart Publishing, Oxford, 2011.

73 After the entry into force of the Lisbon Treaty in 2009, the Court of First Instance is known as the General Court.

74 Gráinne de Búrca, “The European Court of Justice and the International Legal Order After Kadi”, Harvard International Law Journal, vol. 51, no. 1, 2010, p. 23.

75 Idem, “The ECJ and the international legal order”, in Gráinne de Búrca, J.H.H. Weiler (eds.), The Worlds of European Constitutionalism, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2012, pp.136-137.

76 CFI, Case T-315/01 P Yassin Abdullah Kadi v Council of the European Union and Commission of the European Communities, 21 September 2005 (hereinafter “The Kadi Case”).

77 See, Art. 103 Charter of the United Nations.



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international peace and security, members of the UN invest the Security Council with the power to act on their behalf:

“Article 24 1. In order to ensure prompt and effective action by the United Nations, its

Members confer on the Security Council primary responsibility for the maintenance of international peace and security, and agree that in carrying out its duties under this responsibility the Security Council acts on their behalf.”78

The Charter of the United Nations claims that all the members of the UN are bound by the decisions of the Security Council, that they are required to respect and implement, directly or through other forms of action:

“Article 25 The Members of the United Nations agree to accept and carry out the decisions of the Security Council in accordance with the present Charter.”79 “Article 48 1. The action required to carry out the decisions of the Security Council for the maintenance of international peace and security shall be taken by all the Members of the United Nations or by some of them, as the Security Council may determine. 2. Such decisions shall be carried out by the Members of the United Nations directly and through their action in the appropriate international agencies of which they are members.”80 These main arguments invoked by the CFI have revealed the pre-

eminence of the decisions of the Security Council over the Community law and have characterised the relationship between the international legal order under the UN law and the Community legal order under the EU law in the following terms:

“From the standpoint of international law, the obligations of the

Member States of the United Nations under the Charter of the United Nations clearly prevail over every other obligation of domestic law or of international treaty law including, for those of them that are members of the Council of Europe, their obligations under the ECHR and, for those that are also members of the Community, their obligations under the EC Treaty.”81 In its ruling, CFI has expressed that this “primacy extends to decisions

contained in a resolution of the Security Council”82 and that “Member States may, and indeed must, leave unapplied any provision of Community law,

78 See, Art. 24.1 Charter of the United Nations. 79 See, Art. 25 Charter of the United Nations. 80 See, Art. 48 Charter of the United Nations. 81 See, The Kadi Case, para. 181. 82 Ibidem, para. 184.



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whether a provision of primary law or a general principle of that law, that raises any impediment to the proper performance of their obligations under the Charter of the United Nations”83.

If the first ruling of the CFI has stated that EU law was bound by UN law, the final ruling of the ECJ in September 2008 has concluded that “the relationship between international law and the Community legal order is governed by the Community legal order itself, and international law can permeate that legal order only under the conditions set by the constitutional principles of the Community”84. It emphasized the autonomy of the EU legal order and the need to address in this context the conflict that might arise between international law and special regimes of law, as it is the present EU law.

The provisions stipulated in Article 103 of the Charter of the United Nations, which states that the principle of the primacy of obligations under UN law prevail over any other obligations of the Member States:

“In the event of a conflict between the obligations of the Members of the

United Nations under the present Charter and their obligations under any other international agreement, their obligations under the present Charter shall prevail”85.

However, the ECJ has reasoned that the Article 351 TFEU is applied,

determining the relationship between international law and EU law:

“The rights and obligations arising from agreements concluded before 1 January 1958 or, for acceding States, before the date of their accession, between one or more Member States on the one hand, and one or more third countries on the other, shall not be affected by the provisions of the Treaties”86.

Therefore, international obligations undertaken by EU’s Member States

before their EU membership cannot have effect on the obligations arising from the EU treaties. Interpreting these provisions, ECJ stressed the autonomy of the EU legal system:

“The question of the Court’s jurisdiction arises in the context of the internal and autonomous legal order of the Community, within whose ambit the contested regulation falls and in which the Court has jurisdiction to review the validity of Community measures in the light of fundamental rights”87.

83 Ibidem, para. 190. 84 ECJ, Joined Cases C-402/05 P and C-415/05 P, Yassin Abdullah Kadi and Al Barakaat

International Foundation v Council of the European Union and Commission of the European Communities, 3 September 2008 (hereinafter “The Kadi and Al Barakaat Cases”), p. 24.

85 See, Art. 103 Charter of the United Nations. 86 See, Art. 351 TFEU. 87 The Kadi and Al Barakaat Cases, p. 317.



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Moreover, the ECJ explained in its reasoning that the constitutional

principles of the EU treaties are not to be violated by any obligations deriving from international agreements. Therefore, if conflicts may arise, the Court cannot “permit any challenge to the principles that form part of the very foundations of the Community legal order”, namely the fundamental rights and freedoms, and is empowered to determine the effect of the international obligations in the domestic order of the EU: „it is for the Court to review in the framework of the complete system of legal remedies established by the Treaty”88.

Furthermore, the approach of the ECJ vis-à-vis general international law provided in its Kadi judgment enables us to come to the heart of the constitutionalisation of the EU law. “After Kadi, it has become increasingly common among EU lawyers to conceptualise autonomy in a strong constitutional sense”89. Declaring the primacy of EU law, not only over the domestic constitutions of the member states, but also over the international order established by the Charter of the United Nations, the Kadi judgment has advanced a redefinition of the relationship between EU law and international law. Reconsidering the position of the new legal order of the EU within the international legal order, different legal perspectives have been developed in the light of conceptualization the autonomy of the EU law. Lavranos emphasizes that this special autonomy is one of the “elements that make up the very foundation of the Community legal order”, reflecting “the essentials of European constitutional law”90. Moreover, Henri de Waele has interpreted the ECJ decisions in the terms of change of hierarchy, stating that EU law is hierarchically superior to international legal provisions, which has “put the independent character of the Community legal system beyond doubt, and underscored the unprecedented nature of European law once and for all”91. Considering the fact that the EU legal system operates in different important fields, like trade security and defence92, without the application of certain principles of public international law, namely the countermeasures and reciprocity mechanisms, I recognize its self-contained character, even though it

88 Ibidem, p. 5. 89 Jan Willem van Rossem, “The Autonomy of EU Law: More is Less?”, in R.A.Wessel, S.

Blockmans (eds.), Between Autonomy and Dependence, T.M.C. Asser Press, The Hague, 2013, p. 14.

90 Nikos Lavranos, “Protecting European Law…cit.”, p. 271. 91 Henri de Waele, “The Role of the European Court of Justice in the Integration Process:

A Contemporary and Normative Assessment”, Hanse Law Review, 2010, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 8-9.

92 William Phelan, In Place of Inter-State Retaliation: The European Union’s Rejection of WTO-style Trade Sanctions and Trade Remedies, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2014, p. 21.



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might be conceptually debatable by different scholars, as a relevant feature for the evolution of the European constitutionalism.

CONCLUSION Therefore, it is clear that there are both arguments against and favoring EU law as a self-contained regime, depending on the level of analysis of the international law scholars and respectively, EU law scholars. This inquiry is based on the empirical analysis of the relation between the general international law and the self-contained regimes, and particularly the EU legal regime, in the light of the fragmentation of international law – phenomenon which has led to the emergence of these specialized and (quasi) autonomous bodies of law. The construction and analysis of the pro et contra arguments are grounded on the critical analysis, from an interdisciplinary perspective, of the ILC Report on Fragmentation of International Law, concluded in 2006 and the ECJ case law. Analyzing both arguments in favor and against the self-contained character of the EU legal regime, this research confirms the initial hypothesis that, albeit the omnipresence of international law and the special relationship between EU law and general international law, the EU legal order has taken a historical turn towards self-containedness.

On the one hand, the reasons why the self-contained character of the EU regime is extensively debated and conceptually denied refer to the following aspects: (1) the EU’s foundation in international law as a international organization and subsystem of international law; (2) the omnipresence of general law admitted by the majority of legal scholars and the inexistence in concreto of the fully self-contained regimes; (3) the existing linkage between the legal regimes in general and EU regime in particular and general international law, in terms of validity of the establishment of the legal regimes; and (4) the complex problem of the fallback on public international law state responsibility and countermeasures mechanisms in case the mechanisms inherent in the EU legal order fail.

On the other hand, the EU legal regime is characterized by a set of accurate features sufficient to justify the historical turn towards self-containedness: (1) the sui generis character and modus operandi of the EU legal order and its peculiar characteristics that differentiate it from any other regime of international law; (2) the constant evolution of the EU system in terms of autonomy, from the typical treaty- based regime of international law into a sui generis regime and a new legal order of international law (different from the traditional general order); (3) the consolidation of the acquis communautaire, which is the proof of the never-ending evolution of the EU law, independently of the general rules, and the establishment of its own constitutional legal order,



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accommodating fundamental inherent principles, norms, procedures and mechanisms within its sphere of operation; and (4) the rejection of the use of general principles of public international law, namely state responsibility, countermeasures and reciprocity mechanisms, in case of breaches of law, and the role of the ECJ as the engine of the evolution towards self-containedness of the EU law, under the aegis of conclusive judgments.

Having stated the pro et contra arguments articulated in this article, conclusions can be provided to the research question posed at the outset of this inquiry. Therefore, the EU law represents a potential candidate for self-contained regime. I agree that the EU legal system is not a closed legal circuit because it connects with the general law in special circumstances stated above and clearly detailed in the Report of the fragmentation of international law. Thus, one can observe the effects of the public international law in the domestic sphere of the EU law and for these reasons, one admits the fact that it is not fully isolated regime. However, according to the arguments presented above, I notice that the EU has taken a historical turn towards self-containedness, progressively building its own autonomy vis-à-vis general law and revolutionizing EU law.

Why Praying “Hail, Mary” Does Not Denote

to Invade Iraq and to Accept Capitalism?

Contemporary Catholicism and Its Relation to Neoconservative Ideology*

MARIÁN SEKERÁK

Introduction

Christianity, and especially its Catholic form, has been considering a more-less conservative concept. At least since the publication of Blessed Paul VIʼs encyclical letter Humanae vitae (1968) re-affirming the orthodox catholic teaching regarding married love, parenthood, and the rejection of all forms of contraception during the years of Western sexual revolution, Catholic Church has being viewed as relatively robust against her own modifications and opposing or at least slowly reflecting those societal changes which are deemed to be progressive and salutary. Despite the fact that this argument cannot be hold longer as entirely true, as I will show later, more and more intensive debate between those who defend “traditional values” and the so-called “modernists” has come on the scene in recent years. This is evident not only at European but also global level. It is not rare to see this debate, sometimes apparently too intense and sharp, to be relocated to the field of dogmatism and “right and proper” explication of religious truths. Mainly in the Euro-Atlantic sphere the debate is being slightly transposed to the political realm as a discussion of the significance and role which Christianity plays in building of the moral foundations of society1. This is typical particularly for Catholic neoconservatives who usually try to

* This paper came to being within the Development of Scientific Areas Programme at the

Charles University in Prague (PRVOUK), P 17 Sciences of Society, Politics, and Media under the Challenge of the Times (Vědy o společnosti, politice a médiích ve výzvách doby), carried out at the Institute of Political Science of the Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague.

1 See Thomas E. Woods, How the Catholic Church Built Western Civilization, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington, DC, 2005.

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identify their socio-economic and political visions with religious belief, although it is an undeniable fact that the political ideology and Christianity as a religion are in essence different categories, as I shall try to demonstrate in this paper. Thus, they directly or indirectly suggest that only neoconservative political ideology can offer proper explication of religion in the sense of a universal religion which Christianity aspires to be. They often do so by using a language and expressions which recall “the priestly rhetoric”2, and utilizing religious terms and (pseudo)religious reasoning, such as moralizing, appeals to tradition and traditional values of society. In the case of Catholic neoconservatives this has been done by highlighting selected aspects of the Catholic Social Teaching as a bunch of various Papal and Vatican documents on social issues on the one hand, and concealing the critique of capitalism which is inherently contained in the Teaching on the other. This has been done in spite of the fact that the Catholic Social Teaching cannot be considered as an independent economic or political theory of the Catholic Church. Nor does it constitute an autonomous socio-political doctrine of the Church or its political programme. That is why it should be helpful to focus on those aspects of Catholic Social Teaching which are not often accentuated and show their occasional abuse of neoconservative “priestly rhetoric”.

Whilst the former (neoconservative) camp is being identified with “orthodox” and “the most faithful” Christians, the later one, “modernists”, are labelled by their opponents by various titles, for example as liberals, Marxists, pejoratively even as leftists. This ideological struggle has even gone so far that the author of a blog in the prestigious daily The Economist stated that Pope Francis “consciously or unconsciously follows Vladimir Lenin in his diagnosis of capitalism and imperialism”3. In the same vein, an influential American conservative political commentator Rush H. Limbaugh condemned Pope Francis’ views on economy and labelled them as Marxist and socialist4. I consider both the mentioned simple distinction and criticism not only unsustainable but also false.

2 Kenneth S. Zagacki, “The Priestly Rhetoric of Neoconservatism”, Western Journal of

Communication, vol. 60, no. 2, 1996, pp. 168-187. 3 See Erasmus: Religion and Public Policy, “Francis, Capitalism, and War: The Pope’s

Divisions”, (20 June 2014) http://www.economist.com/ blogs/erasmus/2014/06/francis-capitalism-and-war.

4 See Rush H. Limbaugh, “It’s Sad How Wrong Pope Francis is (Unless it’s a deliberate mistranslation by leftists)”, (27 November 2013), http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/ daily/2013/11/27/it_s_sad_how_wrong_pope_francis_is_unless_it_s_a_deliberate_mistranslation_by_leftists; Idem, “Pope Francis Talking Redistribution Again”, (9 May 2014), http://www.rushlimbaugh.com/daily/2014/05/09/ pope_francis_is_talking_redistribution_again.

Why Praying “Hail, Mary” Does Not Denote to Invade Iraq and to Accept Capitalism?


63

In the following sections I aim to (1) describe the main characteristic features of neoconservatism qua political ideology with a specific understanding of economy and politics; (2) sketch out Catholic Church’s views on economy which seem to be contradictory and inconsistent over time as well as incompatible with those which have been promoting by neoconservatives; (3) try to reject reception of the Catholic religion and/or the Catholic Social Teaching as a political ideology; (4) compare U.S. foreign policy doctrines under George W. Bush’s presidency to views of Holy See and traditional Catholic moral teaching. Finally, I present an overview of some turns of the Catholic doctrine related to freedom of conscience and religion, ideal government and Church’s internal system and competencies of her own members. By using of these examples I shall try to point out that the Catholic belief is not identical with neoconservatives’ worldview and that Catholics could neither in their faith nor in their political action be bound by the opinions of their neoconservative co-believers. What is more, I would like to emphasize that the Catholic Church should not be regarded as outdated and conservative institution which is incapable to adapt to new circumstances and changing global trends.

What Is the Point of Neoconservatism?

To begin with, the word “conservatism” as a kernel of the term “neoconservatism” is used in various fashions. Furthermore, the word has acquired more-less negative meaning over time and people use it to describe a type of affection for the old, maintaining backward habits, opinions, theories, morals, etc. In general, it is deemed as a mental rigidity and hostility towards everything new5. To be sure, it is not my enterprise here to offer thorough etymological analysis of the word or depict its different shades of meaning. I would like, however, to use these vocabulary-based considerations in order to throw some light on its quite different meaning used by current neoconservatives. They do not deem “conservative values” as outdated, obsolete or inherently unprogressive. For them, an enduring theme of thought and life “is the perception of society as a moral community, held together by

5 Karolina Adamová et al., Politologický slovník, C.H. Beck, Prague, 2001, pp. 105-106.

See also Pavel Kolář, “Geneze novodobého konzervatismu jako problém sociálních věd ve 20. století”, Sociologický časopis/Czech Sociological Review, vol. 35, no. 4, 1999, pp. 375-395; Robert Nisbet, Konzervatismus, Občanský institut, Prague 1993; Jean-François Drolet, American Neoconservatism: The Politics and Culture of a Reactionary Idealism, Columbia University Press, New York, 2011; Peter Steinfels, The Neoconservatives: The Origins of a Movement – with a New Foreword From Dissent to Political Power, Simon & Schuster, New York, 2013.

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shared values and beliefs, and functioning as an organic whole”6. From a theoretical point of view they are grounded on the so-called “organic theory of the state” which was, paradoxically, a feature of a number of totalitarian regimes. This theory holds that the state is not a mere aggregation of individuals but should be viewed as living organism made up of individuals related to one another, as well as human body consists of its parts and individual cells. Human beings exist within the state and the state cannot survive without its parts, i.e. individuals. Both the state and its members, citizens, constitute together an organic unity where a family is the basic cell allowing reproduction of state’s human substrate. In exchange for individuals’ expressions of legitimacy and support, the state provides them a background for peaceful life in according with their own ways of life and life-giving reproduction. The problem arises when peaceful life and necessary material conditions start to be absent. This happens when unsatisfied emotional needs or economic problems, such as income inequality and closely-related social exclusion reach a critical limit. In a belief that they can avoid these difficulties, neoconservatives propose two distinct and contradictory solutions: social and political conservatism intertwined with economic liberalism or Mont Pelerin style libertarianism which is sometimes called “conservative fusion” or “fusionism”, a term first coined by Frank Meyer in his book The Conservative Mainstream (Arlington House, New Rochelle, NY, 1969)7.

As social and political conservatives, neoconservatives should not be identified with the so-called “Ultramontanists”, i.e. French traditionalists and theoreticians of counter-revolution from the 18th and 19th century represented, for instance, by Joseph-Marie de Maistre, Louis Gabriel Ambroise de Bonald, Hugues-Félicité Robert de Lamennais, François René de Chateaubriand, Pierre-Simon Ballanche, François Dominique de Reynaud, Louis de Halier, or Honoré de Balzac. All of them could be described as “fideistic conservatives”, as John Kekes calls them8. They consciously rejected “reason as a guide to the political arrangements that a good society ought to have”9. For them, only the Christian

6 Andrew Heywood, Political Theory: An Introduction. 3rd ed., Palgrave Macmillan,

Houndmills, 2004, p. 138. 7 This is evident despite the fact that some neoconservatives try ardently to refuse such

bonds; see, for example, Adam Wolfson, “Conservatives and Neoconservatives”, in Irwin STELZER (ed.) Neoconservatism, Atlantic Books, London, 2004, pp. 215-231. On fusionism see more in Emanuel-Mihail Socaciu, Radu-Bogdan Uszkai, “Fusionsim, Religion, and the Tea Party”, Journal for the Study of Religion and Ideologies, vol. 11, no. 33, 2012, pp. 89-106; Peter Kolozi, “The Neoconservative Critiques of and Reconciliation with Capitalism”, New Political Science, vol. 35, no. 1, 2013, pp. 44-64.

8 John Kekes, A Case for Conservatism, Cornell University Press, Ithaca, London, 1998, p. 30; Idem, “Conservative Theories”, in Gerald F. Gaus, Chandran Kukathas (eds.) Handbook of Political Theory, Thousand Oaks, London, Sage, New Delhi, 2004, p. 132.

9 John Kekes, A Case for Conservatism, cit., p. 30.



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belief was guidance for both private and political life. In their theoretical works they fiercely supported monarchical or aristocratic government as the ideal political regime based on religious doctrines10. Sovereignty, they claimed, did not belong to the people but only to God. Especially de Maistre in his book Du Pape (“On the Pope”) asserted an authoritarian conception of politics built upon the strong theocratic political system in which the Pope was considered a major driving force of education. Catholic Church was seen as the most perfect institution, combining in itself infallibility in spiritual matters and sovereignty in earthly matters. Societal changes were considered unnecessary and undesirable forces that should be eliminated forever. He held that individual’s call for freedom was pure egoism; it was a revolt of a part against the whole body of the people. De Maistre rejected both constitutionalism as well as parliamentary form of government and resisted any changes and revolutions, attacking the individualism and human freedom. According to him, the best government should be concentrated in a person of absolute and authoritarian ruler11. Despite of supporting monarchy and papal authority, Ultramontanism had become neither popular, nor appraised by the Catholic Church. It is, then, not surprising that Gregory XVI in his encyclical letter Singulari nos of 1834 strongly condemned the errors of Félicité de Lammenais, one of the adherents of Ultramontanism.

Indeed, neoconservatives cannot be identified with French traditionalists. Nevertheless, their support for “traditional (Western) values” (marriages between a man and a woman, role of the religion in society, morality, etc.) and deprecation of liberalism, the so-called moral relativism, and cultural heterogeneity is obvious12. As Wendy Brown ironically states, neoconservatives of various shades are bound together “primarily by shared objects of loathing: the United Nations, Amnesty International, and the World Court; latte liberals, redistributive welfarists, godless libertines, and flag burners; Muslims, European cosmopolitanism, critical intellectuals, Jane Fonda,

10 See Richard F. Costigan, “Tradition and the Beginning of the Ultramontane Movement”, Irish Theological Quarterly, vol. 48, no. 1-2, 1981, pp. 27-46; Ulrich Wollner, “Vybrané aspekty myslenia hlavných predstaviteľov francúzskeho tradicionalizmu 19. storočia”, Filozofia, vol. 57, no. 4, 2002, pp. 259-274; Idem, “Francúzski tradicionalisti”, in František Novosád, Dagmar Smreková (eds.) Dejiny sociálneho a politického myslenia, Kalligram, Bratislava, 2013, pp. 328-339; Adam Wielomski, “Ultramontanizm wczoraj i dziś”, Teologia Polityczna, vol. 2004/2005, no. 2, 2004/2005, pp. 303-311.

11 See Joseph de Maistre, The Pope; Considered in his Relation with the Church, Temporal Sovereignties, Separated Churches, and the Cause of Civilization, C. Dolman, London, 1850.

12 David Robertson, The Routledge Dictionary of Politics. 3rd ed., Routledge, London, New York, 2004, pp. 339-340. More about differences between “traditional kinds of conservatism” and neoconservatism see, e.g., Tibor Mándi, “Ideology and Tradition. An Epistemological View of Neoconservatism”, World Political Science Review, vol. 10, no. 1, 2014, pp. 147-162; Kenneth S. Zagacki, “The Priestly Rhetoric…cit.”, pp. 180-182.

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San Francisco, and ethics committees...”13. In accordance with some past conservatives, such as Edmund Burke, they deem tradition as “a set of customary beliefs, practices, and actions that has endured from the past to the present and attracted the allegiance of people so that they wish to perpetuate it”14. This is manifested in continental Europe not only by opposing same-sex marriages but in some extreme cases also by calling for a restoration of the “unity of throne and altar”, i.e. resurrection of the royalist ideas as well as rejection of both democracy and republicanism, for example in France, Czech Republic, Hungary, Slovakia and in some other previously monarchic states. Moderate neoconservatives by arguing for a restoration of authority and social discipline, however, plead for an elitist or a limited model of democracy with the smallest possible governmental interventions in economy on the one hand and the broadest possible market freedom on the other15. They accept governmental interference and some changes in political arrangements with protecting traditional values while a government should “keep these changes as small and specific as possible”16. Neoconservatives are hostile to utopias and any attempts to promote broad visions of equality, particularly those which could be labelled as socialist or social-democratic. They never question profits, accumulation, or wealth inequality. Nor do they conceive capitalism as inherently exploitative economic system17. They believe that capitalism is “the only economic system consistent with human freedom and with economic growth”18, and hail its “bourgeois” virtues and values as “hard work, thrift, frugality, moderation, and self-discipline”19. Therefore, as put by Andrew Heywood, neoconservative political thought “has always been open to the charge that it amounts to ruling-class ideology. In proclaiming the need to resist change, it legitimizes the status quo and defends the interests of dominant or elite groups”20. Using Wendy Brown’s sharp words, neoconservatism “is born out of a literally unholy alliance, one that is only unevenly and opportunistically religious”21.

13 Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare: Neoliberalism, Neoconservatism, and De-

Democratisation”, Political Theory, vol. 34, no. 6, 2006, p. 697. 14 John Kekes, A Case for Conservatism, cit., p. 38. 15 Cf. Daniela Ježovicová, “Konzervatizmus v dejinách politického myslenia”, Politické

vedy, vol. 1, no. 4, 1998, p. 104. 16 John Kekes, A Case for Conservatism, cit., p. 47. 17 Peter Kolozi, “The Neoconservative Critiques…cit.”, p. 45. 18 David J. Hoeveler, Jr., “Conservative Intellectuals and the Reagan Ascendancy”, The

History Teacher, vol. 23, no. 3, 1990, p. 313. 19 Ibidem. 20 Andrew Heywood, Political Theory…cit., pp. 138-139. 21 Wendy Brown, “American Nightmare…cit.”, p. 696. It is surely no coincidence that one

of the representatives of this stream was Otto von Habsburg, a descendant of the noblest European family and a member of the libertarian Mont Pelerin Society.



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Despite of a vast number of common traits we should distinguish some independent wings of conservatism: French Nouvelle Droite and American Paleoconservatism. French New Right as a cultural movement represented mainly by philosopher Alain de Benoist can be hardly positioned in the traditional political dichotomy (Left-Right). U.S. paleoconservatives create ideologically more-less coherent political group gathered around the intellectual periodicals, such as Modern age (founded in 1957 by the American Catholic intellectual Russel Kirk), Chronicles: A Magazine of American Culture (founded in 1976), and The American Conservative (founded in 2002). They share some fundamental characteristic with neoconservatives, such as glorification of capitalism qua economic system, accentuating traditional values, rejecting the emphasis on individual rights and democracy, or promoting the elite theory of government. On the contrary, they differ from neoconservatives in some points. First and foremost, paleoconservatives attack capitalism from the cultural point of view. They unanimously agree with neoliberal theoreticians, such as Friedrich A. Hayek or Milton Friedman that capitalism denotes the basis of individual freedom, political liberty, and individual self-realization. But they believe that “by privileging individual liberty over the formation of character, that is, bourgeois virtues, libertarian thinkers failed to appreciate the cultural bulwarks of capitalism”22. According to them, neoconservatives promote capitalist amorality, cultural nihilism and devalue classical “protestant” ethics of capitalism by undermining the moral character of the citizenship and threatening “the social, cultural, and political institutions of Western civilization itself”23. In their worldview, “the acids of modernity have left us entirely disinherited from old customs and ways, and conservatism’s project of conservation is but a glittering illusion”24.

Paleoconservatism should also be distinguished from American “religious right” represented by neoconservatives25. However “there are some points of association, and paleoconservatives see Christianity as a critical component of American ethnicity, their thinking is derived [...] from secular rather than Biblical premises”26. Religion, they believe, has “an indispensable role to play in fostering public discipline, preserving social stability, and acting as a vehicle of moral tradition”27. True religion, furthermore, has stoical impact. It is “a consolation to the soul despairing of the world’s injustices and the corrective to the impossible schemes that project a cure to those injustices into

22 Peter Kolozi, “The Neoconservative Critiques…cit.”, p. 51. 23 Ibidem, p. 52. 24 Adam Wolfson, “Conservatives…cit.”, p. 219. 25 See Paulina Napierała, “The Strategy of the Religious Right: Christian Fiction or Political

Agitation?”, Ad Americam: Journal of American Studies, vol. 2012, no. 13, 2012, pp. 45-65. 26 Edward Ashbee, “Politics of Paleoconservatism”, Society, vol. 37, no. 3, 2000, p. 80. 27 David J. Hoeveler, Jr., “Conservative Intellectuals…cit.”, p. 314.

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the reforming zeal to transform the world”28. Moreover, paleoconservatives differ from neoconservatives in their foreign policy attitudes and the assessment of cultural-political message of the American Revolution and American political institutions29. As the main representatives of the Catholic paleosonservative wing in the U.S.A. are deemed Brent Bozell, Robert A. Sirico, Michael Novak, Warren H. Carroll, Patrick Joseph Buchanan, Richard John Neuhaus, William McGurn, George Weigel, as well as the aforementioned Russel Kirk30. We should also mention the fellows of the neoconservative Acton Institute or the libertarian Cato Institute and Competitive Enterprise Institute. The supporters of traditional Catholicism who could be more-less deemed as paleoconservatives in continental Europe are, for instance, Italian politician Rocco Buttiglione and recently deceased lawyer Mario Palmaro (who verbally criticized Pope Francis several times), Czech political scientist and politician Petr Fiala, or French economist Jean-Yves Naudet. The youngest generation of Catholic paleoconservatives is represented by Thomas E. Woods, Jr., an American historian, writer and political analyst. Almost all of the aforementioned intellectuals can be viewed as the proponents of fusionism. Especially in the works of M. Novak31 or T. E. Woods, Jr.32 we can find typical features of both political Catholicism and economic libertarianism/neoliberalism. They are both strongly influenced by the Austrian school of economics. It seems, then, that “[m]uch of what is wrong about libertarianism from the Catholic perspective has been integrated into purportedly Catholic ethical reflection on the economy”33.

To conclude this section, it will be appropriate to deal with one more political movement which must be distinguished from neoconservatism, although it may resemble it in relying on Christianity as one of its main inspirations. It is the Christian Democracy, whose origins date back to the 19th century. The largest expansion of the Christian Democratic political parties

28 Ibidem. It is without any doubts that their views on the role of religion in society are quite

different from those of classical conservatives such as Michael Oakeshott. See Michael Oakeshott, Religion, Politics and the Moral Life; Timothy Fuller, ed., Yale University Press, New Haven and London, 1993.

29 See Roman Míčka, “Dějinný kontext a současné podoby amerického politického katolicismu”, Studia theologica, vol. 15, no. 3, 2013, pp. 91-98.

30 More about his philosophy see, for example Gerald J. Russello, “Russell Kirk and Territorial Democracy”, Publius: The Journal of Federalism, vol. 34, no. 4, 2004, pp. 109-124.

31 See Michael Novak, The Catholic Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, The Free Press, New York, 1993.

32 See Thomas E. Woods, The Church and the Market: A Catholic Defense of the Free Economy, Regnery Publishing Inc, Washington, DC, 2005.

33 Daniel K. Finn, “Nine Libertarian Heresies Tempting Neoconservative Catholics to Stray from Catholic Social Thought”, Journal of Markets & Morality, vol. 14, no. 2, 2011, p. 488.



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occurred in the interwar period and after World War 2, especially in the former Italy, Germany and the Fourth French Republic. At that time, this type of political parties resigned on a purely confessional orientation and altered their previous stance on the economy. Nowadays, such parties usually tend to be placed in the centre-right of the political spectrum, and are characterized by moderate conservatism and social liberalism, mainly in Western Europe. Contrary to the neoconservatives, Christian Democrats usually support the principle of social partnership, the welfare state and a mixed type of economy. Although they draw from religious belief as a source of understanding a man and his political dimension, this type of parties should not be viewed as clerical. Their connectivity to the Church structures is predominantly low. They pay lower attention to the societal elites and present themselves mainly as folk-type political parties. In spite of continuing popularity of neoconservative parties (not only in the U.S.A.), the era of the greatest success of Christian Democratic parties in Europe culminated between the 1970s and 1990s34.

Catholic Social Teaching: An Illusion of Economic Neoliberalism

It is undisputable that the Catholic doctrine resembles conservatism in

many ways. By refusing contraception, same-sex marriages and upholding of the priests’ celibacy the Church “still insists on the crucial function of the value framework which has an interesting parallel with conservatism”35. One of the evident examples is St. John Paul IIʼs encyclical Centesimus annus (1991). Reading § 49 of the document where the Polish Pope writes on the strengthening of intergenerational bounds, we can find some parallels with Edmund Burke’s locus classicus from his Reflections on the Revolution in France, that society is indeed a partnership not only between those who are living, but between those who are living, those who are dead, and those who are to be born. Amongst the other papal statements resembling conservative

34 See more in David Robertson, The Routledge Dictionary of Politics, cit., 2004, pp. 62-63; Roberto Papini, “Christianity and Democracy in Europe: The Christian Democratic Movement”, in John Witte, Jr. (ed.) Christianity and Democracy in Global Context, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1993, pp. 47-64; Thomas Albert Kselman, Joseph A. Buttigieg, European Christian Democracy: Historical Legacies and Comparative Perspectives, Notre Dame Press, Notre Dame, IN, 2003; John Bruton, “The Influence of the Economic Crisis on Centre-Right Values: A Christian Democratic Perspective”, European View, vol. 11, no. 2, 2012, p. 182; Alexandru Gabor, “Christian Democracy and Welfare”, European Journal of Science and Theology, vol. 8, no. Suppl. 1, 2012, pp. 313-320.

35 Pavel Pšeja, “Sociální encykliky Jana Pavla II. a jejich politické aspekty”, in Petr Fiala, Jiří Hanuš, Jan Vybíral (eds.) Katolická sociální nauka a současná věda, CDK, Vyšehrad, Brno, Prague, 2004, p. 153.

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political ideology (and concurrently opposing the economic neoliberalism) those of Benedict XVI seem to be exemplary. In his encyclical Caritas in veritate of 2009 the Pope pleads for strengthening of the role of a state in economy and highlights that “the state’s role seems destined to grow, as it regains many of its competences”36. In the same document the Pope emphasizes that any economic activity should “be directed towards the pursuit of the common good, for which the political community in particular must also take responsibility”37. This statement is congruent with traditional conservative calls for strong political institutions and paternalism which is, however, ambivalent with economic neoliberalism.

Some other affiliations with conservatism could be found in papal teaching on the issue of socialism. As I tried to point out earlier, neoconservatives unanimously reject any left economic programmes, including the social-democratic or socialist ones. In the same way, many popes throughout the history condemned socialist political ideology. Blessed Pius IX labelled socialism and communism (particularly because of their atheistic stance) as “the wicked theories” in the encyclical Nostis et Nobiscum38. In another encyclical Quanta cura (1864) he criticized both ideologies because of requesting to build the existence of the families and households solely on the principles of civil (i.e. not canon) law. “A plague of socialism” was considered to threaten the whole society, natural bound between a man and a woman and the divine law also by Leo XIII in many of his encyclicals (Quod apostolici muneris, 1878; Diuturnum, 1881; Humanum genus, 1884; Libertas, 1888; Graves de communi re, 1901). Similarly, the popes Benedict XV (Ad beatissimi apostolorum, 1914) and Pius XI (Quadragesimo anno, 1931) deemed socialism as incongruent with the Catholic teaching. Later in the early 1970s, Paul VI lamented in his apostolic letter Octogesima adveniens (1971) that Christians felt too often “attracted by socialism” and “tend to idealize it in terms which, apart from anything else, are very general: a will for justice, solidarity and equality. They refuse to recognize the limitations of the historical socialist movements, which remain conditioned by the ideologies from which they originated”39. St. John Paul II was another supporter of anti-socialist stance. His statements are congruent with his predecessor Leo XIII in accentuating the danger of viewing socialism as “simple and radical solution”40.

At first sight, it might seem that the popes condemned any socially-oriented economic programmes and, therefore, propagated capitalist economy

36 Benedict XVI, “Caritas in veritate”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 101, no. 8, 2009, § 41. 37 Ibidem, § 36, italics in original. 38 Pius IX, “Nostis et Nobiscum” (8 December 1864), § 6, http://www.papalenc

yclicals.net/Pius09/ p9nostis.htm 39 Paul VI, “Octogesima adveniens”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 62, no. 6, 1971, § 31. 40 John Paul II, “Centesimus annus”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 83, no. 10, 1991, § 12.



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and pro-market measures. This is what many current scholars interpreting the Catholic Social Teaching try to promote in their works41. There are, however, a lot of papal statements and documents proving that the opposite is true. One of the clearest pronouncements is that of John Paul II made in his little known interview with Jas Gawronski, an Italian journalist and politician in 1993 for Italian daily La Stampa. Citing Leo XIII he claimed that some “seeds of truth” can be found even in a socialist political program42. Pope reminded that “in communism there has been a concern for the social issues, while capitalism is quite individualistic”43. Moreover, in one of his books then-cardinal Joseph Ratzinger and later Pope Benedict XVI admitted that “[i]n many respects, democratic socialism was and is close to Catholic Social Doctrine, and has in any case made a remarkable contribution to the formation of a social consciousness”44.

Both popes elaborated similar thoughts in their social encyclicals. John Paul II wrote, for example, in his encyclical Laborem exercens of 1981 on the topic of human labour in terms of “exploitation of the workers” while confronting it with “the growing areas of poverty and even hunger”45. “The Church is firmly committed to this cause, for she considers it her mission, her service, a proof of her fidelity to Christ, so that she can truly be the ‘Church of the poor’”46. Thus, the social teaching of St. John Paul II went clearly closer “into a bit of a schizophrenic situation”47. On the one hand, the Pope rejected Marxism although this rejection went out of the anthropological understanding of a man. On the other hand, the issue of ownership and the associated problems, such as exploitation of workers and law wages can be found on the same platform as Marxism. However, some scholars insist, congruently with the

41 See, e.g., Philip Booth, “Christianity, the Market Economy and the Limits to Human Knowledge”, Economic Affairs, vol. 25, no. 2, 2005, pp. 44-45; Idem, “Catholicism and Capitalism”, Economic Affairs, vol. 29, no. 3, 2009, pp. 63-67; Roman Míčka, “Církev a její potíže s liberalismem a kapitalismem”, Studia theologica, vol. 6, no. 4, 2004, pp. 70-83; Idem, “Kdo vlastní klíče k interpretaci sociální nauky církve?”, Studia theologica, vol. 12, no. 2, 2010, pp. 86-101.

42 In the Italian original: “Ma è anche vero quello che dice Leone XIII, cioè che ci sono dei «semi di verità» anche nel programma socialista.”

43 John Paul II, “Intervista concessa da Giovanni Paolo II al giornalista Jas Gawronski e pubblicata dal quotidiano La Stampa”, (2 November 1993), http://www.vatican .va/holy_father/john_paul_ii/speeches/1993/november/documents/hf_jpii_spe_19931102_intervista_it.html.

44 Joseph Ratzinger, Without Roots: The West, Relativism, Christianity, Islam, Basic Books, New York, 2006, p. 72.

45 John Paul II, “Laborem exercens”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 73, no. 9, 1981, pp. 597–598, § 8.

46 Ibidem. More about John Paul IIʼs views on the “preferential option for the poor” see Gerald S. Twomey, “Pope John Paul II and the 'Preferential Option for the Poor'”, Journal of Catholic Legal Studies, vol. 45, no. 2, 2006, pp. 321-368.

47 Pavel Pšeja, “Sociální encykliky Jana Pavla II…cit.”, p. 147.

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Pope, that neither Marxist account of history, nor its anthropology, are acceptable from the Christian point of view48.

It needs to be added that a similar evaluation can be applied to the statements of his successor Benedict XVI. The Pope emeritus condemned Marxism as well as capitalism many times. In his address during the inaugural session of the Fifth general conference of the bishops of Latin America and the Caribbean in Aparecida on 13 May 2007 the Pope criticized both capitalist and Marxist economic systems for taking into account only material and economic dimension of the problems of humanity. He labelled this as “the most destructive error” of the systems. Both systems “falsify the notion of reality by detaching it from the foundational and decisive reality which is God”49. In the same speech the Pope used even sharper words in order to denounce both Marxist and capitalist economic scheme. It is worth quoting his statement at length:

“Both capitalism and Marxism promised to point out the path for the creation of just structures, and they declared that these, once established, would function by themselves; they declared that not only would they have no need of any prior individual morality, but that they would promote a communal morality. And this ideological promise has been proved false. The facts have clearly demonstrated it. The Marxist system, where it found its way into government, not only left a sad heritage of economic and ecological destruction, but also a painful oppression of souls. And we can also see the same thing happening in the West, where the distance between rich and poor is growing constantly, and giving rise to a worrying degradation of personal dignity through drugs, alcohol and deceptive illusions of happiness”50.

In a similar vein the Pope attacked “an unregulated financial

capitalism” in his last Message for the celebration of the World Day of Peace in January 201351, and a “reckless capitalism with its worship of profit that results in crisis, inequality and poverty” which he did few days later in his address to the participants in the plenary meeting of the Pontifical council “Cor Unum”52. In the social encyclical Caritas in veritate the Pope described many of the current features of capitalism, such as mobility of capital and labour, outsourcing of human resources, or liberalization of the capital markets53. Pope emeritus also called for adoption of “new life-styles” in order to preserve

48 See John Milbank, Theology and Social Theory: Beyond Secular Reason, 2nd ed.,

Blackwell Publishing, Malden, MA; Oxford, UK; Carlton, Australia, 2006, pp. 177-205. 49 Benedict XVI, “In inauguratione operum V Coetus Generalis Episcoporum Americae

Latinae et regionis Caribicae”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 99, no. 6, 2007, p. 449. 50 Ibidem, pp. 453-454. 51 Benedict XVI, “Recurrente Universali XLVI Die precationi pro pace dicato. Beati gli

operatori di pace”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 105, no. 1, 2013, p. 63. 52 Benedict XVI, “Ad sessionem plenariam Pontificii Consilii ‘Cor Unum'’, Acta

Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 105, no. 2, 2013, p. 166. 53 See Benedict XVI, “Caritas in veritate”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 101, no. 8, 2009, § 40.



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environment against harmful human influences54. This seems to be in contrast with the views of neoliberal economists like former Czech President Václav Klaus, one of the staunchest opponents of environmentalist movement55.

Statements of Pope Francis’ post-synodal apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium (2013) are akin to those of his predecessors. The Bishop of Rome resolutely condemned “the absolute autonomy of markets and financial speculation”56. According to him, people “can no longer trust in the unseen forces and the invisible hand of the market”57. Francis has developed these positions in many of his other speeches, homilies and interviews. For reasons of space, however, I will not pay my attention to all of them. Nevertheless, a short comparison of the views of the three mentioned popes (St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI and Francis) could be helpful for us to thoroughly grasp their teachings on capitalism and unregulated market which differ substantially from the stances advocated by neoconservatives.

Although the Pope John Paul II was strongly affected by the consequences of the year 1989 and preferred “healthy” capitalism, including responsible entrepreneurship to any mutation of planned economy, he was aware of the danger of separation of the economy from the ethical principles. This becomes a reality whenever the material well-being and profit are elevated above human dignity. His social doctrine was based on philosophical anthropology. According to this teaching a human being is a centre of economic life; therefore, it should not be treated as a production tool. In particular, in the encyclical Laborem exercens he has shown that ownership of the means of production and material goods should be perceived as means for human self-fulfilment. Likewise he criticized unrestrained pursuit of profit, consumerism and consumption slavery, which are typical of capitalist “society of abundance”. A lot of human needs are deeper in their origin and character and have a spiritual basis which cannot be fulfilled merely by market rationality.

Also Benedict XVI has joined and developed socio-theoretical work of his predecessor. He accentuated the need for ethical framing of economy and pointed out to the global dimension of the problems that arise as a by-product of the utilitarian mentality. He also emphasized the need for universal human brotherhood, cooperation and solidarity of nations with poorer countries, as well as corporate social responsibility.

54 Ibidem, § 51. 55 See Václav Klaus, Blue Planet in Green Shackles. What Is Endangered: Climate or

Freedom?, Washington: Competitive Enterprise Institute, 2007; James McCarthy, Scott Prudham, “Neoliberal Nature and the Nature of Neoliberalism”, Geoforum, vol. 35, no. 3, 2004, pp. 275-283.

56 Francis, “Evangelii gaudium”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 105, no. 12, 2013, § 202. 57 Ibidem, § 204.

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It is clear that the distinctions in opinion vis-à-vis a laissez-faire market economy preferred by neoconservatives are increasingly becoming explicit in the works and speeches by Pope Francis, especially in his apostolic exhortation Evangelii gaudium. According to him the economic disparities between people and nations have been increasingly deepening and poverty is a reality that has not avoided people from the most developed countries. Non-payment of wages, degrading evaluation of the work and a high rate of unemployment become a reality in countries that have not significantly felt an impact of the economy based on belief in the “invisible hand of the market”. The hypothesis according to which the wealth of an individual helps to increase welfare of the whole society has proved to be wrong58. Speculative trading on virtual capital markets allowing a few people to maximize their personal gains is part of an ideology that overlooks the uniqueness of the human being and ignores suffering of those who did not enjoy the favour of “market happiness”. All views of the aforementioned three Popes sharply contrast with the ideas advocated by neoconservatism as a political ideology.

Not only popes are those who strictly oppose the neoliberal, pro-market approach to economy. Similar statements as those made by St. John Paul II, Benedict XVI, or Francis can be found in the book of the contemporary German cardinal Reinhard Marx entitled Das Kapital: Ein Plädoyer für den Menschen (“Capital: A Plea for the Human Being”). Archbishop of Munich and Freising defends traditional economic system of many of the continental-European states based on a welfare state. He is “firmly convinced that the welfare state is not only morally but also politically and economically necessary condition for the continued existence of a market economy”59. His diagnosis of laissez-faire capitalism (more market freedom, less governmental regulations) is identical with that of his namesake Karl Marx. Both prominent Germans see capitalism as a threat to society, blaming it for the increase of poverty, violation of the social peace, and loss of the moral and political freedom. Cardinal Marx, in contrast to the author of the “first” Das Capital, rejects the abolition of private property. He identifies the solution of the contemporary economic problems with state’s regulation of the economy. German prelate assumes that “the state is not a potential threat to freedom, but that freedom and market can be secured only by state’s authority”60.

As radical as possible are the words of the official Vatican documents issued by the Pontifical council for Justice and Peace: The Note “Towards reforming the international financial and monetary systems in the context of global public authority” (2011) and “Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the

58 Cf. Francis, “Evangelii gaudium”, cit., pp. 1042-1043, § 54. 59 Reinhard Marx, Kapitál. Plaidoyer pro člověka, Prague: Academia, 2013, p. 198. 60 Ibidem, p. 63.



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Church” (originally published in 2004). The (anonymous) authors of the later, for example, remark the problem of exploitation and alienation of labour in capitalist economies in this way:

“One must not fall into the error of thinking that the process of overcoming the

dependence of work on material is of itself capable of overcoming alienation in the workplace or the alienation of labour. The reference here is not only to the many pockets of non-work, concealed work, child labour, underpaid work, exploitation of workers — all of which still persist today — but also to new, much more subtle forms of exploitation of new sources of work, to over-working, to work-as-career that often takes on more importance than other human and necessary aspects, to excessive demands of work that makes family life unstable and sometimes impossible, to a modular structure of work that entails the risk of serious repercussions on the unitary perception of one's own existence and the stability of family relationships. If people are alienated when means and ends are inverted, elements of alienation can also be found in the new contexts of work that is immaterial, light, qualitative more than quantitative”61.

As I tried to show in this section, Catholic Social Teaching can hardly

be identified with neoliberal approach to the economy preferred by many neoconservatives and (Catholic) paleoconservatives, not only those in U.S.A. On the one hand, a strong condemnation of Marxist and socialist political ideologies is present in various Catholic documents, especially in the papal encyclicals from the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century when Marxian theorists had been viewed as atheistic enemies of the Church, trying to destroy religious fundaments of society. After passing of several decades, however, the Church’s view has been gradually changing. This happens particularly in relation to the appearance of the ideas of liberation theology and Christian socialism. It is without any doubts that Pope Francis as the first Latin American head of the Church is under strong influence of the former. It should be remembered that many Christian Democratic parties in Europe, especially after World War II, have adopted and promoted the welfare state economy. On the other hand, the popes and the competent Vatican authorities have strongly condemned the dangers of capitalism and free market economy which causes widening of economic disparities and social exclusion. Therefore, neoconservative support of laissez-faire capitalism overtly contradicts the official Catholic Social Teaching. In this way, Catholic acceptance of libertarian economic ideas could be labelled as “heretic” as it was done by Daniel K. Finn62. It seems obvious, then, that Catholic Social Teaching should be viewed neither as “a political programme”, nor as “a coherent doctrine about society”; it is rooted in the tradition of Christian morality, Christian anthropology and philosophy, as well as “on the long-lasting experience with

61 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, Compendium of the Social Doctrine of the Church, USCCB, Washington, DC, 2005, § 208.

62 Daniel K. Finn, “Nine Libertarian Heresies…cit.”, pp. 487-503.

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the moral evaluation of social reality”63. Moreover, the Catholic doctrine “does not constitute a third path between liberal capitalism and Marxist collectivism. It is by no means a new ideology, but a moral-theological reflection on human existence in society”64.

Described in this way, the Catholic Social Teaching “presents itself as a peculiar body of thought that not only should be associated with any political ideologies but which is, moreover, qualitatively different from them”65. When it comes to content, the Catholic doctrine should not and cannot be identified with ideology in political sense. For purposes of this article, I understand a political ideology as a body of ideas, opinions and theories that creates a social group about itself, about its position in society, about its objectives, which constitutes the program of political activities of that social group leading to the maintenance, modification or a complete change of socio-political order66.

Catholic Social Teaching differs from both socialist (Marxist) and neoliberal (neoconservative, paleoconservative) political ideologies. It is critical and hostile towards almost all of the major rigid ideologies and concepts that are typical for modern age67. We must take into account that all papal and Vatican documents are addressed “to the largest possible number of people; this is the reason for the absence of unambiguous and decisive ideological opinions”68. Thus, neither Catholicism, nor Christianity as such should be defined in terms of political ideologies. The difference is twofold. First, political ideologies representing certain conceptions of good or ideal society are significantly connected with profane sphere. Christianity, on the contrary, is a religious system which does not consist of the body of conceptions of good or ideal society. It targets primary a transcendent dimension of man’s existence overlapping cognitively constructed reality. Second, political ideologies try to reach their aims by social actions. This feature, however, can be found hardly in Christianity. Every religion, of course, has a societal dimension, but Christianity, as well as Catholicism, does not request for social action in order to reach its aims which are transcendent. Thus, while political ideologies, such as neoconservatism or socialism require active social (and political) support, Christianity, in contrast, is immune to any social actions69. On the other hand,

63 Roman Míčka, “Kdo vlastní klíče k interpretaci sociální nauky církve?”, cit., p. 100. 64 Eugeniusz Górski, “Conservative-Liberal Socialism: The Socio-Economic Views of John

Paul II”, Dialogue and Universalism, vol. 12, no. 6-7, 2002, p. 37. 65 Pavel Pšeja, “Sociální encykliky Jana Pavla II…cit.”, p. 152. 66 Cf. Richard GEFFERT, “Ideológie a ich funkcie v politickom živote”, Politické vedy, vol. 10,

no. 1-2, 2007, p. 39. 67 Pavel Pšeja, “Sociální encykliky Jana Pavla II…cit.”, p. 153; Eugeniusz Górski,

“Conservative-Liberal Socialism...cit.”, p. 43. 68 Eugeniusz Górski, “Conservative-Liberal Socialism...cit.”, pp. 42-43. 69 Michal Šabatka, “Křesťanství ve světle teorie ideologie: analýza fenoménu moderní

doby”, Politologická revue, vol. 15, no. 1, 2009, p. 74.



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the Catholic Social Teaching is often interpreted by Neoconservatives as inclined to and supporting laissez-faire capitalism. It is for that reason why multiple references to the teaching are helpful in order to contradict such misinterpretations.

Foreign Policy Doctrine of the American “Neocons” and the Catholic Church

In this section, I would like to briefly introduce fundamental differences

in perspectives on the issues of international politics between the Catholic Church (represented by the Holy See) on the one hand, and the (U.S.) Neoconservatives on the other. I intent to depict them on the background of the “two Wars in Gulf”: the Gulf War and the war against Iraq. I not aim here to present a detailed analysis of neither historical events, nor diplomatic actions taken by the Holy See as a part of her foreign policy at that time. My brief analysis will cover ideological rather than geo-political or diplomatic issues. Analysing both conflict situations, i.e. both wars directed against Saddam Hussein’s troops, the latter of which ultimately led to his overthrow and execution, it seems clear that the Holy See’s position had not been significantly different. An enduring feature of her diplomacy and foreign policy was emphasizing the need for peaceful dispute resolution stemming from the Catholic doctrine accentuating that “the promotion of peace in the world is an integral part of the Church’s mission”70. In addition to this, the Church holds that diplomacy must be “based on the firm and preserving conviction that peace can be won through quiet listening and dialogue”71. Preference of diplomatic instruments such as shuttle diplomacy provided by Pope’s personal envoys, and accentuating of the need to maintain world peace in view of the serious humanitarian and economic consequences of a war have been undoubtedly meaningful. From the perspective of the U.S. seems to be paradoxical that (especially taking into account the position of the Realist school of IR) in the war against Iraq had suffered by massive demonstration of its power. It is obvious that the restoration of American soft power could be one of the solutions of the situation. On the other hand, this aspect of U.S. foreign policy should not be overvalued especially when American unilateralism still persists. Thus, the United States “will never ask for permission to defend their own security: they will not hesitate to act unilaterally and pre-emptively. Although the States would seek for support of the international community, the right to

70 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, cit., § 516. 71 Francis, “Ad Publicas Auctoritates Coreae Meridionalis apud Aedes Praesidiales”, Acta

Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 106, no. 9, 2014, p. 693.

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self-defense will still remain their vital interest in spite of being in conflict with other [international] treaties”72.

Some analysts assume that U.S. foreign policy doctrine under Bush, Jr.’s presidency, based on spreading of the freedom and democracy with a privileged utilization of pre-emptive attack and humanitarian intervention means clear rejection of the post-World War II international consensus and adoption of the neoconservative imperial vision accompanied with the above mentioned unilateralism73. Such unilateralism, or unilateral militarism conducted under the aegis of “democracy promotion”74, however, can be hardly deemed as a way of fighting international terrorism, or dealing with issues such as “weapons of mass destruction” but “is rather the road to an Orwellian nightmare and era of perpetual war in which democracy and freedom will be in dire peril and the future of the human species will be in question”75. Other scholars admit that is possible to talk about certain neoconservative-based values of G.H.W. Bush’s foreign policy but it would be a mistake, on the other hand, to argue that his case was a “pure neoconservative” policy76. In any case, it is evident that a space for the neoconservative ideological concepts had been clearly opened thanks to Bush’s managerial style and because of continuing uncertainty about the means and intentions of Hussein’s (i)rational political calculations77. Finally, the third type of interpretation suggests that although the invasion of Iraq was a product of Bush’s neoconservative values and a vector of

72 Jaroslav Ušiak, Jana Lasicová, “Strategická a bezpečnostná kultúra Spojených štátov

amerických”, Politické vedy, vol. 16, no. 1, 2013, p. 88. 73 Peter Kolozi, “The Neoconservative Critiques…cit.”, p. 63. See also Jana Tůmová, “The

Ways of American Unilateralism: Core and Development of the Concept”, Politické vedy, vol. 15, no. 2, 2012, pp. 8–35.

74 More about the idea of “democracy promotion” see, for example, Maria Ryan, “ʻExporting Democracy?’ Neoconservatism and the Limits of Military Intervention, 1989-2008”, Diplomacy & Statecraft, vol. 21, no. 3, 2010, pp. 491-515; Mark J.L. McClelland, “Exporting Virtue: Neoconservatism, Democracy Promotion and the End of History”, The International Journal of Human Rights, vol. 15, no. 4, 2011, pp. 520-531; Beate Jahn, “Rethinking Democracy Promotion”, Review of International Studies, vol. 38, no. 4, 2012, pp. 685-705.

75 Douglas Kellner, “Preemptive Strikes and the War on Iraq: A Critique of Bush Administration Unilateralism and Militarism”, New Political Science, vol. 26, no. 3, 2004, p. 440.

76 Lukáš Hoder, “Architekti Bushovy doktríny. Vliv neokonzervativců na vytváření zahraničně politické strategie George W. Bushe”, Mezinárodní vztahy, vol. 44, no. 2, 2009, p. 38.

77 Lukáš Hoder, Petr Suchý, “Bushova doktrína na Blízkém východě: Zahraniční politika USA vůči Blízkému východu v období administrativy George W. Bushe”, Obrana a strategie, vol. 2011, no. 1, 2011, pp. 72, 74. More about Bush’s doctrine see Robert Jervis, “Explaining the Bush Doctrine”, in Robert J. Art, Robert Jervis (eds.) International Politics: Enduring Concepts and Contemporary Issues. 7th ed., Longman, London, 2005, pp. 439-453.



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the impact of his closest collaborators, it meant a definitive (?) end of neoconservative hegemony in the White House and the failure of the “New American Century” concept promoted by the representatives of this school of thought, such as D. Rumsfeld, P. Wolfowitz, N. Podhoretz, I.L. Libby, R. Perle, R.B. Cheney, J. Bush and others. This assumption can be simply repulsed in confrontation with the aforementioned militarism. It could be hardly imagined that U.S. will give up their unilateral actions in foreign policy. As we have seen, such unilateralism is closely intertwined with the American domestic doctrine which appears to be inherently neoconservative. It is sometimes believed that the neoconservative chapter in the US foreign policy should not be viewed definitely closed even under Barack Obama’s administration78. This is so, because neoconservatism, as Brian C. Rathbun reminds us, is marked “by a high degree of voluntarism, a belief that the United States can remake the international environment”79.

It would be helpful to remember the views of Bush, Jr.’s predecessor Ronald Reagan who has become an icon in the gallery of prominent neoconservative politicians. Like Bush, Jr., he had promoted democracy spreading to other countries. In his foreign political steps, however, Reagan largely followed the line of democratic restoration in those states where such tradition had been historically existed and was only “interrupted” with the arrival of (real or supposed-to-be) communist governments. Drawing from the fact of Reagan’s tolerance for some authoritarian regimes and moderate absolute monarchies some scholars assume, that “Reagan was not a neoconservative and that he would probably not have been agreed with the neoconservative democracy promotion in the countries without such tradition”80. On the contrary, in terms of domestic politics, it is thought that

78 See Alexandra Homolar-Reichmann, “The Moral Purpose of US Power: Neoconservatism

in the Age of Obama”, Contemporary Politics, vol. 15, no. 2, 2009, pp. 179-196. 79 Brian C. Rathbun, “Does One Right Make a Realist? Conservatism, Neoconservatism,

and Isolationism in the Foreign Policy Ideology of American Elites”, Political Science Quarterly, vol. 123, no. 2, 2008, p. 299. See also Charles Krauthammer, “The Unipolar Moment”, in Ann G. Serow, Everett C. Ladd (eds.) The Lanham Readings in the American Policy, W.W. Norton and Company, Inc., New York, 1997, pp. 619-628; William Kristol, Robert Kagan, “National Interest and Global Responsibility”, in Irwin Stelzer (ed.) Neoconservatism, Atlantic Books, London, 2004, pp. 57-74; Aaron Rapport, “Unexpected Affinities? Neoconservatism’s Place in IR Theory”, Security Studies, vol. 17, no. 2, 2008, pp. 257-293; Petar Kurečić, “Geopolitičke i geostrateške ideje i suvremenom neokonzervativizmu”, Politička Misao: Croatian Political Science Review, vol. 47, no. 3, 2010, pp. 203-219; Jean-François Drolet, “A Liberalism Betrayed? American Neoconservatism and the Theory of International Relations”, Journal of Political Ideologies, vol. 15, no. 2, 2010, pp. 89-118; Ty Solomon, “Resonances of neoconservatism”, Cooperation and Conflict, vol. 48, no. 1, 2013, pp. 107-112.

80 Lukáš Petřík, Fenomén konzervativní revoluce Margaret Thatcherové a Ronalda Reagana a její ideové základy. Unpublished rigorous thesis, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Arts, Institute of World History, Modern History Seminar, Prague, 2008, p. 227.

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since his presidency the period of popularity of the New Right had been occurred in the country; it was a conservative turn going hand in hand with strengthening of the Republican Party and its ideological alliances with various domestic religious movements81. An outlined perception of Reagan’s foreign policy steps appears to be more interesting in comparison with those of Bush, Jr. Both politicians affiliated to the protestant Christianity (Reagan as a Presbyterian, G.W. Bush as a Methodist) are usually considered as politicians who had relentlessly followed neoconservative ideological line in their foreign policy. However, with the passage of time we can notice an endeavour of some political theorist “to cleanse” them of the epithet “neoconservative”. In my opinion it is so due to a number of negative connotations of the term which have begun to join it during recent years. Such well-intended attempts seem to be vain when challenging classical neoconservative axioms, for example a notion of the national interest which is defined in the widest possible way as “a belief in American moral authority” over the world and “as the primary instrument for realizing international outcomes”82. It seems that both Reagan’s and G. H. W. Bush’s policies towards states which were supposed to threaten American sovereignty show a lot of similarities with the mentioned description of the national interest.

The previous discussion on the interpretation of undisputed influence of neoconservative ideology on G.H.W. Bush’s foreign policy should be added some important notes. First and foremost, the intellectuals of the neoconservative camp usually identify themselves with Christianity, whether Evangelical or Catholic. Religious faith constitutes a substantial and even necessary element of conservative thought in general, although theism or belief in a personal God Almighty is not necessary. Religious faith is especially important for the neoconservatives because providing a value basis relying on the truth revealed by God. Moreover, Christian belief provides protection against any ideological absolutism: Left one or Right one83. By criticizing political liberalism as well as by reference to the (Christian) religious ideals, many neoconservatives have sought to identify automatically their worldview with the Catholic Church’s teaching. They publicly declare that a true Catholic must not support any other policies than neoconservative ones. It is evident from the fundamental opinion shift of Michael Novak, one of the leading American Catholic neoconservatives, from the radical Left in 1960s and early

81 Roman Míčka, Michael Novak a jeho projekt teologie demokratického kapitalismu.

Dissertation thesis, University of South Bohemia, Faculty of Theology, České Budějovice, 2007, p. 26.

82 Brian C. Rathbun, “Does One Right Make a Realist?...cit.”, p. 273. 83 Daniela Ježovicová, “Objekty konzervatívnej analýzy”, in Michal Dobrík, Dagmar

Hoscheková (eds.) Aktuálne problémy politiky. Zborník príspevkov z I. teoretického seminára doktorandov v Banskej Bystrici 28. septembra 2004, Faculty of Political Science and International Relations, Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Banská Bystrica, 2004, p. 13.



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1970s to his public support for Reagan’s presidential candidacy in 1980. This ideological shift has been considered as “sobering up”, i.e. the adoption of “the only correct” Catholic worldview84.

To consider the current neoconservative ideology as a monolith of opinions would be a serious methodological and interpretive mistake. Conservatives in the U.S.A. are broken into several directions while the neoconservatives consider themselves as “modernized conservatives” who promote expansive, interventionist and activist models of foreign policy associated with pro-Israel demeanour and global spreading of the western-type democracy. As it was mentioned earlier, American neoconservatism “is based on the superiority of American ideals and values”85. Military power is deemed as unique tool for promoting American superiority86. Catholic Social Teaching strictly opposes such an approach. A war of aggression is always considered “intrinsically immoral”87. In the case where such a war breaks out, “leaders of the State that has been attacked have the right and the duty to organize a defence even using the force of arms. To be licit, the use of force must correspond to certain strict conditions”88. In this cases the Church follows her traditional just war doctrine. Unfortunately, the concept is viewed by neoconservatives differently. They deem it rather as “a surgical procedure in which multiple technological superiority over the enemy allows his total defeat while minimizing own losses”89. Therefore, it could be hardly imaginable that the political views of American neoconservatives reflect pacifist Catholic Church’s doctrine on international conflicts and the proper way of their resolving.

Some Changes of the Catholic Doctrine

As I mentioned earlier, Catholicism is being identified with rigid traditionalism and conservatism. On the contrary, throughout the history we have been witnessed many larger or smaller changes of Catholic Church’s views on some key societal and political issues. Church’s (in)consistency of opinions is not so apparent as it might seem at first glance. Catholic doctrine’s turnover, often substantial, have been recorded more than once in history. And it seems to be evident that some other changes would not be excluded in future.

84 Roman Míčka, Michael Novak...cit. pp. 13-15. 85 Brian C. Rathbun, “Does One Right Make a Realist?...cit.”, p. 283. 86 Ibidem, p. 284. 87 Pontifical Council for Justice and Peace, cit., § 500. 88 Ibidem. 89 Pavel Barša, “Zdroje amerického chování. K diskuzi o transatlantické diferenci”,

Mezinárodní vztahy, vol. 38, no. 2, 2003, p. 18.

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On the Freedom of Conscience and Religious Freedom

The question of freedom of conscience and its range have been widely discussed for several centuries and it is obvious that this debate has not stopped until today. Christian democratic political parties adapted as their agenda the so-called “reservation in conscience”, for example, in the exercise of medical profession and especially in providing contraception or abortion. Paradoxically, the consensus on the issue can found by Christians with liberals who by the very nature of liberalism support the free choice of man and the freedom to choose her worldview and a way of life under condition that it does not threaten freedom and life of another human being. It does not seem to be strange that Saint John Paul II highly appreciated the value of the freedom of conscience. His various speeches and documents can help us as proofs. One of the most beautiful examples is his message on the value of the freedom of conscience and religious freedom which was addressed in November 1980 to those heads of states which had signed the Helsinki Final Act of The Conference on Security and Co-operation in Europe in 1975. In his letter Pope explicitly states that “freedom of conscience and of religion […] is a primary and inalienable right of the human person”90. Such a statement seems to be in a sharp contrast with the previous Catholic teaching represented by Gregory XVIʼs encyclical letter Mirari vos of 1832. At that time the Holy Father flatly rejected the idea of the freedom of conscience and religion freedom. He thundered that the infamous source of religious indifference is the mistaken belief that “liberty of conscience must be maintained for everyone”91. Furthermore, the Pope strongly criticized the other “errors” of that time: “Experience shows, even from earliest times, that cities renowned for wealth, dominion, and glory perished as a result of this single evil, namely immoderate freedom of opinion, license of free speech, and desire for novelty”92. Certainly, Pope’s inordinate statements were written as a reaction to than situation in the Papal States but “it set tone for papal statements for much of the rest of the century”, as Paul E. Sigmund reminds us93. This is obvious in his successor’s encyclical letter Quanta cura of 1864, accompanied with infamous Syllabus errorum (The Syllabus of Errors). Citing St. Leo’s epistle, blessed Pius IX, who had been previously hailed as a Liberal Pope by many revolutionaries, described freedom of discussion as the “most injurious

90 John Paul II, “Message of John Paul II on the Value and Content of Freedom of

conscience and of Religion”; (1 September 1980), LʼOsservatore Romano: Weekly Edition in English, no. 3, 1981, § 5.

91 Gregory XVI, “Mirari vos”, § 14 (15 August 1832), http://www.papalencyclicals. net/Greg16/ g16mirar.htm.

92 Ibidem. 93 Paul E. Sigmund, “The Catholic Tradition and Modern Democracy”, The Review of

Politics, vol. 49, no. 4, 1987, p. 536.



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babbling”94. In the late of the 19th century another Pope, Leo XIII embarked to fight a new enemy of the Catholic Church: liberals. He attacked liberal opinions and views, including the right for the liberty of conscience in his encyclical Libertas where he wrote that liberals made “the State absolute and omnipotent”, and had audaciously claimed “that man should live altogether independently of God”95. In spite of accepting the idea of republicanism or acknowledging the secular origin of state sovereignty Leo, opposing to modern liberal ideas, remained doctrinaire and reactionary96.

The mentioned words appear to be in contrast with later Catholic teaching, mainly with the documents of the Second Vatican Council. In the Declaration on Religious Freedom “Dignitatis humanæ” of 1965 Council Fathers state that a man “is not to be forced to act in a manner contrary to his conscience”97. Moreover, the authors of the Declaration hold that “the freedom of man is to be respected as far as possible and is not to be curtailed except when and insofar as necessary”98. It is no wonder that these radical changes in the Catholic doctrine have been widely appraised by many scholars, for example by the famous political philosopher John Rawls in his last seminal work The Law of Peoples99. St. John Paul II extended Council teaching on the issue in his encyclical Centesimus annus. In the document he applied for a need of full-scale recognizing man’s right to life according to his conscience “which is bound only to the truth, both natural and revealed”100.

On the Most Appropriate Political Regime

Knowledge of the History of Ideas may be helpful to grasp of what leading Catholic theologians and thinkers of the past thought about the ideal form of political regime. Perhaps the greatest authority amongst them, St. Thomas Aquinas, had proposed one of the most elaborated teachings on the topic. It is worthy to remember that the authority of “Doctor Angelicus” in the system of Catholic doctrine was enshrined by Pope Leo XIIIʼs encyclical letter Aeterni Patris (1879). Contrary to this fact it remains true that the rehabilitation of his philosophy and theology “implied no concessions to modern ideas; the

94 Pius IX, “Quanta cura”, § 3 (8 December 1864) http://www.papalencyclicals.

net/Pius09/p9quanta.htm 95 Leo XIII, “Libertas”, Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 20, 1887, p. 609. 96 Bernard Laurent, “Catholicism and Liberalism: Two Ideologies in Confrontation”,

Theological Studies, vol. 68, no. 4, 2007, pp. 818-819. 97 Second Vatican Council, “Declaratio de libertate religiosa 'Dignitatis humanae'”, Acta

Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 58, no. 14, 1966, § 3. 98 Ibidem, § 7. 99 See John Rawls, The Law of Peoples, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Mass.; London,

1999, pp. 21-22, footnote no 15; p. 154, footnote no 52; pp. 166-167, footnote no 75. 100 John Paul II, “Centesimus annus”, cit., § 29.

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Tomistic model was helpful in expressing the Church’s opposition to modern political theory”101.

Although Aquinas’ views on the most proper political regime differ in his various writings they can be reconstructed to some extent. On the one hand, in his notorious seminal work Summa Theologiæ, he pleads for a “well mixed” government as the best form of political regime102. But on the other hand, in an unfinished work On Kingship to the King of Cyprus (in Latin De Regno ad Regem Cypri) the famous Doctor of the Church claims that a peace which is the aim of the state is caused by the unity of the people drawing its legitimacy from one ruler not excluding a bad one. It is obvious that he advocates the rule of one man, but “not self-evidently nor on grounds of overriding principle”103. In the Summa Theologiae, however, he adds another spring of the peace, namely that the access to power is available to the greatest number of people. Therefore, some scholars interpret this contradiction in a way that “Summa Theologiae only extends the theory of the work ʻOn Kingship’”104. But anyway, according to Aquinas, such regimes as tyranny, oligarchy and democracy should be included into the group of “bad” or unjust governments. An adjective of “fair” should be attributed to politea, aristocracy and monarchy whilst the latter he considers as optimal for three reasons. In the mentioned work On Kingship Aquinas explicitly states that “[g]overnment by one is [...] more advantageous than government by several”105. An explication of his stance is threefold. First, government by one or monarchy is efficient and it is serves as the best tool for providing general interest, the so-called common good. Second, the monarchy has the least tendency to degenerate into tyranny. Third, the monarchy as a governance of a king over his realm is analogous to God’s rule over the world106. On the other hand, Aquinas admits that people living in the kingdom could get the impression that their contribution to the common good will not benefit them but, on the contrary, it will be beneficial only to the king. This may turn into peoples’ indifference to the common affairs107.

101 Bernard Laurent, “Catholicism and Liberalism…cit.”, p. 820. 102 John Finnis, Aquinas: Moral, Political, and Legal Theory, Oxford University Press, New

York, 1998, p. 261. 103 Jeremy Catto, “Ideas and Experiences in the Political Thought of Aquinas”, Past and

Present, vol. 71, no. 1, 1976, p. 13. 104 Matúš Sitár, “K spisu sv. Tomáša Akvinského O kráľovstve”, Filozofia, vol. 61, no. 1,

2007, p. 56. 105 Thomas Aquinas, Political Writings (Edited by R. W. Dyson), Cambridge University

Press, Cambridge, UK, 2002, p. 11. 106 Lukáš Valeš, Dějiny politického myšlení od starověku po Machiavelliho, AgAkcent,

Kolinec, 2013, pp. 141-142. 107 Michal Chabada, “Tomáš Akvinský: kresťanský aristotelizmus”, in František Novosád,

Dagmar Smreková (eds.) Dejiny sociálneho a politického myslenia, Kalligram, Bratislava, 2013, p. 184. See also Ernest L. Fortin, “St. Thomas Aquinas”, in Leo Strauss, Joseph Cropsey (eds.) History of Political Philosophy. 3rd ed., The Chicago University Press, Chicago and London, 1987, pp. 248-275.



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The same Pope, who put Aquinas on the top of the hierarchy of Catholic theologians of all times, admitted that it is not for the Church to decide which political system is optimal. In the 7th chapter of his encyclical Diuturnum of 1881 Leo XIII wrote that when justice is being respected people should not be prevented from choosing a form of government which they consider to be the best. Similar views he expressed eleven years later in his encyclical Au milieu des sollicitudes focused on the relationship of the Church and the State in then France. Pope assumed that any political regime is good only if leading to the ultimate goal which is the common good (bonum communae). He repeated his teaching in the encyclical Sapientiae christianae claiming that the Church “holds that it is not her province to decide which is the best amongst many diverse forms of government and the civil institutions”108. As in many other issues, the Second Vatican Council marked a substantial turn also in Church’s doctrine on the most proper government. In the Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World “Gaudium et spes” we can find following statement:

“It is in full conformity with human nature that there should be juridico-political

structures providing all citizens in an ever better fashion and without any discrimination the practical possibility of freely and actively taking part in the establishment of the juridical foundations of the political community and in the direction of public affairs, in fixing the terms of reference of the various public bodies and in the election of political leaders. All citizens, therefore, should be mindful of the right and also the duty to use their free vote to further the common good”109.

Although still working with the concept of “common good”, Church

gave a new content to her teaching on the right form of government by supporting a universal suffrage. She declared by the mouths of the Council Fathers her full support to citizens’ self-governance, namely democracy. Her preference for democracy as the most suitable form of government has definitely reached the Catholic Social Teaching after the “Annus mirabilis” 1989. Apparently the bigger appraisal of the democratic form of government is John Paul II’s statement in the Centesimus annus. Looking at the changes that had occurred in the Central and Eastern Europe he wrote that

“the Church values the democratic system inasmuch as it ensures the participation of citizens in making political choices, guarantees to the governed the possibility both of electing and holding accountable those who govern them, and of replacing them through peaceful means when appropriate”110.

108 Leo XIII, “Sapientiae christianae”, Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 22, 1890, p. 396. 109 Second Vatican Council, “Constitutio pastoralis de Ecclesia in mundo huius temporis

ʻGaudium et spes’”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 58, no. 15, 1966, § 75. 110 John Paul II, “Centesimus annus”, cit., § 46.

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What is surely beyond dispute is that such papal statement had been unimaginable at the times of St. Thomas Aquinas or later, even at the beginning of 20th century111.

Church’s Internal System and Competencies of Her Members

Since Jorge Mario Bergoglio sit on St. Peter’s throne, it has been

vigorously debated (not only outside the Catholic Church) on the need of fundamental reform of Church’s structures, especially the Roman curia. In his first major papal document, Apostolic Exhortation Evangelii Gaudium which has been the subject of controversy among many neoconservatives112, the Pope explicitly calls for “a conversion of the papacy”113. He appeals the central structures of the Church and the institution of the papacy as such to obey the call for pastoral conversion. “Excessive centralization, rather than proving helpful, complicates the Church’s life and her missionary outreach”, writes the Pope114.

While current Pope calls for “a sound decentralization”115, his predecessor before more than one century did not permit such a possibility. St. Pius X in his encyclical Pascendi Dominici gregis (1907) questioned the requirements of “modernists” who had claimed that “a share in ecclesiastical government should [...] be given to the lower ranks of the clergy, and even to the laity, and authority should be decentralised”116. In the list of “the errors of the modernists” called Lamentabili sane (1907) he denounced by his full doctrinal authority the modernistic claim that “the organic constitution of the Church is not immutable. Like human society, Christian society is subject to a perpetual evolution”117. In the encyclical Pascendi the Pope expressed his

111 A brief sketch of the current Church’s views on democracy is offered by (the

paleoconservative Canadian writer) George Weigel, The Truth of Catholicism: Inside the Essential Teachings and Controversies of the Church Today, PerfectBound, London, 2001, pp. 150-167. See also Paul E. Sigmund, “The Catholic Tradition...cit.”; J. Bryan Hehir, “Catholicism and Democracy: Conflict, Change, and Collaboration”, in John Witte, Jr. (ed.) Christianity and Democracy in Global Context, Westview Press, Boulder, CO, 1993, pp. 15-30.

112 See Thomas E. Eddlem, “Has the Pope Gone Socialist?”, The New American, January 6, 2014, pp. 20-21; Leah Mickens, “Papal Economics”, The Humanist, May-June 2014, pp. 22-25; Michael Sean Winters, “Libertarians Become Vocal Critics of Exhortation”, National Catholic Reporter, January 31-February 13, 2014, p. 23.

113 Francis, “Evangelii gaudium”, cit., § 32. 114 Ibidem. 115 Ibidem, § 16. 116 Pius X, “Pascendi Dominici gregis”, Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 40, 1907, § 38. 117 Idem, “Lamentabili sane”, Acta Sanctae Sedis, vol. 40, 1907, error No 53.



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wondering how modernists had been dare to ask to adjust the Index of the Holy Office (List of Prohibited Books) and the Roman congregations. Apart from the fact that infamous Index librorum prohibitorum was formally abolished in the late 1960s by blessed Paul VI we should label Pope Francis at least as a modernist if not a heretic, using the words of his predecessor. Indeed, for St. Pius X, as he wrote in Notre charge apostolique, the true friends of the Church and people were neither revolutionaries, nor innovators: they were “traditionalists”118.

Some Other Changes in Church’s Teaching

It seems to be evident from the previous examples that the Church could change her opinion over time and flexibly adapt her teaching on a number of key issues. It is salutary to note that many other changes have not yet been mentioned. What I bear in mind are following instances: changed Church’s position in learning about the position of the Earth as the centre of the Universe, an accessibility of the Holy Scripture to all believers and using of the historical-critical exegetical method which was allowed by Pius XII by his encyclical Divino afflante Spiritu (1943), burning of heretics as those who expressed disagreement with the official teaching of the Church in medieval times, Church’s attitude to Darwin’s theory of evolution which has been, after its initial rejection, officially accepted as a scientific theory by Pius XII in his encyclical Humani generis (1950), the possibility of liturgical celebration in vernacular languages which was authorized by the Second Vatican Council in the Constitution Sacrosanctum Concilium (§§ 36 and 54). A few years back, however, the Pope Pius XII wrote to the bishops in his encyclical Mediator Dei (1947) that it had pained him grievously to listen about using “of the vernacular in the celebration of the august Eucharistic sacrifice”119. Moreover, the Bishop of Rome strictly protested against the translation of some feasts outside their normal day of celebration which is now common practice, for example, in case of the feast of Corpus Christi which was in some countries translated to the nearest Sunday.

Furthermore, it is worthy to compare Church’s paste and present attitudes to the problem of the so-called animation of a human body. In accordance with Aquinas’ theological opinion the soul connects to body tens of days later after the act of conception while the number of souls varies depending on the sex of the fetus. More precisely, the man encompasses his/her soul from the act of conception but firstly he/she acquires just a vegetative soul.

118 Idem, “Notre charge apostolique”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 2, no. 16, 1910, p. 631. 119 Pius XII, “Mediator Dei”, Acta Apostolicae Sedis, vol. 39, no. 12, 1947, p. 544.

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Consequently, a vegetative soul is replaced by a sensitive one and, later, rational soul replaces a sensitive one. A few centuries later the Church through the instruction Donum vitae (1987) issued by the Congregation for the Doctrine of the Faith thought about the “animation” that human being from the very moment of its conception is immediately endowed with a soul. It was confirmed by St. John Paul II in his encyclical Evangelium vitae of 1995 (§§ 60 and 61).

These and many other circumstances affecting man’s life have underwent a thorough re-consideration and confirm that the Catholic Church today could not be viewed as (too) conservative institution as it might appears at first glance. Therefore, it is not appropriate to exclude completely any possibility that some other issues in which Church takes a strict approach today will not be revised in a foreseeable future. Some signs have already been evident as a shift in the question of Eucharistic communion of divorced Catholics who have entered into a new civil marriage. Church’s doctrinal position on homosexual persons also remains a great challenge. In spite of referring homosexuality as a “grave depravity” and homosexual intercourse as “intrinsically disordered and contrary to natural law”120, the Church at the same time warns against unjust discrimination towards homosexual persons121. Such a quite friendly approach of the Church was completely unimaginable few decades ago. On the contrary, only “thanks” to several sentences in the Catechism a vast number of people are forbade loving and they are recommended to live “in chastity”, i.e. to choose involuntarily exactly the same state of life which has been chosen voluntarily by the priests and friars. It is possible that this unpleasant situation of many Catholics might one day become an impetus for the revision of the Church’s view to this topic. As it has been proven many times before, the Church herself is always capable of internal reforms.

Conclusion What are we to conclude, then, from our debate of the relation of the

Catholicism and Neoconservatism? The Catholic Church is undoubtedly a long-lasting and honourable institution with a significant moral and political impact. It consists of a varied group of people with different ethnic and social origin. Even more importantly, the political views of her members are not homogenous. It is said that only the Holy Spirit knows the exact number of Church’s religious

120 Catechism of the Catholic Church with Modifications from the Editio Typica, Doubleday,

New York, 2003, § 2537. 121 Ibidem, § 2538.



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orders. The same is true, apparently, when we talk about political and ideological orientation of the Catholics.

It has been proven in the paper that the Church should not be viewed as a monolith of unchangeable opinions. It means that its own views concerning various issues have been evolving over times. Take, for example, an issue of the freedom of conscience and religion, or ideal type of government. Church’s own views on divorced Catholics and homosexuals have been slowly changing as well. In all these cases it has been shown that the Church is capable of self-reflection and can change its own doctrine face to face of the global societal progress. This is one of the main reasons why it would not be considered a conservative institution. Moreover, the Church has very different views than the neoconservatives, many of whom consider themselves as “orthodox Catholics”. It is well evident in her views on the economy or foreign policy. These are fundamentally different from those held by neoconservatives. While the Church fence against both capitalism and socialism and the statements of recent Popes are closer to the social-democratic or Keynesian economic views, neoconservatives prefer a neoliberal approach of the free market and minimal governmental intrusions. In its foreign policy doctrine, the Church gives priority to peace, international institutions, international law and diplomatic way of the conflict resolution. Neoconservatives, on the contrary, prefer power solutions, pre-emptive attacks, militarism and unilateralism. Any diplomatic negotiations are considered by them as a sign of weakness. Therefore, we can hardly identify individual opinions of neoconservative believers with the views of the Catholic Church. Accordingly, the Church does not identify itself with any political ideology. In addition, neither Catholicism, nor Christianity as such is political ideology, as it has been shown. It is worthy to note that Christianity as such is a religion and differs significantly from neoconservatism which does not address theological issues at all, despite occasional using of special “priestly rhetoric”.

At the end of the paper it should be reminded that Church’s doctrine forbids any fundamentalist interconnections of the Catholicism with a political ideology. It was long-reigning Leo XIII who wrote in his encyclical Sapientiae christianae that the Church “resolutely refuses, promoted alike by right and by duty, to link herself to any mere party and to subject herself to the fleeting exigencies of politics”122. In like manner, the Pope refused any attempts “to involve the Church in party strife”123. More than century later the Church reiterated this teaching in other words:

“It is difficult for the concerns of the Christian faith to be adequately met in one

sole political entity; to claim that one party or political coalition responds completely to the demands of faith or of Christian life would give rise to dangerous errors. Christians

122 Leo XIII, “Sapientiae christianae”, cit. p. 396. 123 Ibidem.

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cannot find one party that fully corresponds to the ethical demands arising from faith and from membership in the Church. Their adherence to a political alliance will never be ideological but always critical”124.

Some years ago Max Boot concluded in his chapter concerning the

“myths of neoconservatism” that the representatives of this school of thought have not been relatively influential because of their connections with then ruling elites but “because of the strength of their arguments”125. A critique could say, on the contrary, that their voice is so strength and influential because it is too loud. In other words, neoconservatives shout loudly enough to be heard by politicians all over the world. Nevertheless, irrespective of the high frequency or plausibility and credibility of their arguments, Catholics’ voice aspires to be taken seriously in world politics. That voice, however, cannot be deemed congruent with any political ideology, including the neoconservative one. In this paper I have tried to prove that some of the “myths of neoconservatism” are not in fact myths, but true grounded principles of this political theory. Neoconservatives’ preference of unilateralism in international politics, reduction of the importance of international political institutions or support of laissez-faire capitalism have proved to be inconsistent with Catholic Church’s teaching. For that reason, we cannot deem neoconservatism a political theory that would publicly act as “spokesman” of Catholicism or Christianity as a religion, despite occasional (pseudo)religious rhetoric used by the proponents of the theory.

124 Compendium, § 573. 125 Max Boot, “Myths about Neoconservatism”, in Irwin Stelzer (ed.) Neoconservatism,

Atlantic Books, London, 2004, p. 48.

Comparing Orbánism and Gaullism

The Gaullist Physiognomy of Orbán’s Post-2010 Hungary*

ESZTER PETRONELLA SOÓS

INTRODUCTION

After 1989, Hungarian politicians rarely referred to France as a model.

However, the right wing Hungarian government instated in 2010, the politicians and intellectuals around the governing party Fidesz ‒ Alliance of Young Democrats, frequently refer to French Gaullism as a source of inspiration. This may either mean that 1) Gaullism and the political figure/work of de Gaulle serve as example to be followed by Hungarian politicians; 2) or that they are simply instrumentalized to the benefit of Fidesz. When forming his government in 2010, Viktor Orbán stated that the Hungarian situation was similar to France in 1958, because both countries suffered from a leadership crisis1. In early 2012, Viktor Orbán referred to de Gaulle as a role model, while also mentioning the concept of “grandeur nationale” so dear the famous French president2. In October of the same year, without however mentioning the French case, Orbán elaborated on the idea of leadership, claiming that a presidential system would be perhaps more able to cope with difficult reforms and decisions than a parliamentary one3. Viktor Orbán is not the only member of government to refer to de Gaulle or to the French case: in August 2012, then Vice-Prime Minister Tibor Navracsics also emphasized the similarities between the Hungarian situation and de Gaulle's

* This paper is based on a communication delivered on occasion of the 2012 Budapest

Conference of the Central European Political Science Association (CEPSA). I would like to thank all the colleagues (including the anonymous peer reviewers) who contributed to its elaboration either by asking questions or by providing critical insight during the edition of the text. Your contribution is very much appreciated. All remaining faults and errors are mine.

1 Quoted by: Tibor Svárkonyi, “A magyar de Gaulle”, Népszava.hu, 1 June 2010, http://www.nepszava.hu/articles/article.php?id=304282. (Downloaded: 23 January 2014.)

2 Balázs Gabay, Levente Bucsy, „Orbán: Ezek a vádak nem méltók Európához”, mno.hu, 18 January 2012, http://m.mno.hu/belfold/orban-ezek-a-vadak-nem-meltok-europahoz-1044517. (Downloaded: 10 June 2012.)

3 INDEX & MTI, “Orbán: Az elnöki rendszer alkalmasabb a reformokra”, index.hu, 10 October 2012, http://index.hu/belfold/2012/10/10/orban_az_elnoki_rendszer_alkalmasabb_a_refo rmokra/. (Downloaded: 6 November 2012.)



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France during the 1950s, their common characteristic being the rapid setting up of a new political system4. In December 2012, when students filled the streets of Budapest, protesting against the education reform of the government, a debate about the similarities between 2012 Hungary and 1968 France was engaged in the blogosphere and the press5. Last but not least, the de Gaulle-Orbán comparison received international coverage, most notably on the pages of the French Le Monde newspaper6. This paper asserts that indeed Gaullism is a viable analogy for better understanding the nature of Orbánism, not because the latter is a Hungarian version of the former, but because the similarities and differences between them can serve a better understanding of Orbánism. Is Gaullism the genuine source of inspiration for Victor Orbán and his party in government, or is it only a piece of a party identity-building strategy? We will not really address this question here, which calls for a thorough qualitative inquiry on Hungarian politics. Instead, we will use the comparison for heuristic purposes. At first glance, there are striking similarities between the two political movements: the accession to power during a period of crisis, the political weakness of the predecessors, the personal charisma of the leader, the high importance given to the nation and to preserving its sovereignty, a sovereignist conception of the European Union, a tendency to make use of discretionary executive power, the accusations of systemic authoritarianism. These similarities are sufficient reasons for engaging in a deeper comparative analysis. This paper aims makes the first steps in this direction. Firstly, we will define Gaullism for comparative purposes. Secondly, we will clarify what post-2010 “Orbánism” is. Third, we will draw up the first elements of a comparison between Gaullism and Orbánism, and between de

4 HVG.HU & MTI, “Navracsics: Sólyom Lászlónak sem lehettek kétségei”, hvg.hu, 18 August

2012, http://hvg.hu/itthon/20120818_Navracsics_Solyom_Laszlonak__sem_lehettek. (Downloaded: 23 January, 2014.)

5 See: Zsolt Bayer, “Kultúrkampf”, Magyar Hírlap, 18 December 2012, http://www. magyarhirlap.hu/kulturkampf. (Downloaded: 3 June 2013); JOTUNDER, “Bayer fenyegeti a diákokat”, Örülünk, Vincent?, 18 December 2012, http://orulunkvincent.blog.hu/2012/12/18/bayer_fenyegeti_a_diakokat. (Downloaded: 3 June 2013); András Földes, “Bayer Zsolt már Orbán lemondását jósolja?”, Képviselő Funky, 18 December 2012, http://kepviselofunky.blog.hu/2012/12/18/bayer_zsolt_ mar_orban_lemondasat_josolja. (Downloaded: 3 June 2013.) and Eszter Petronella Soós, “Hogy is volt az az 1968?”, Francia politika, 19 December 2012, http://franciapolitika. blog.hu/2012/12/19/94_hogy_is_volt_az_az. (Downloaded: 3 June 2013).

6 Yves-Michel Riols, “La posture gaullienne de Viktor Orban”, Le Monde, 12 April 2013, http://www.lemonde.fr/europe/article/2013/04/12/la-posture-gaullienne-de-viktor-orban_3159069_3214.html. (Downloaded on 29 January 2015.) and “Viktor Orban, l'imposture gaullienne?”, Le Monde, 25 April 2013, http://mediateur.blog.lemonde.fr/ 2013/04/25/viktor-orban-limposture-gaullienne/. (Downloaded: 29 January 2015.)



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Gaulle's France and Orbán's post-2010 Hungary. Finally, we will examine the merits and the limits of the analogy.

Gaullism: A Certain Idea of France

Historians7 showed that Gaullism is a dynamic movement and an ideology “compatible with many practices”8. The General himself was very pragmatic when it came to policies. For instance, de Gaulle was often considered an anti-American and an anti-British politician. If President de Gaulle was reluctant to postwar US dominance, General de Gaulle stood firmly on the side of the Allies during the war and even considered the possibility of a French-British union in 1940 to be able to continue the war against the Third Reich9. The same goes for his allegedly anti-European policies (like the famous “empty chair crisis”), when in truth, the European Community was undoubtedly developing and consolidating during his presidency. His writings are full of pro-European opinions and positions10. Some historians argue based on such changes and discrepancies, rightly so, that the policies of de Gaulle vary with history. For René Rémond's classical work, Les droites en France11, Gaullism illustrates one tradition of French right-wing thought stemming from doctrines, styles and movements like Bonapartism. To mention some similarities between Gaullism and Bonapartism, Bonapartism asserts that parties divide the nation instead of unifying it, and therefore they are to be exceeded12. Bonapartism is also authoritarian and anti-parliamentarian, and tries to create a direct relationship with the people by passing around parties13, which is undoubtedly true in the case of Gaullism, too. Rémond, though, underlines the fact that no 100% identification is possible. On the other hand, authoritarian or anti-parliamentary propensities are not exclusive to the Bonapartist-Gaullist tradition: anti-parliamentarian feelings

7 For example: Serge Berstein, Histoire du gaullisme, Éditions Perrin, Paris, 2012. 8 Serge Berstein, Histoire…cit., p. 7. 9 See: Charles de Gaulle, Háborús emlékiratok, Gondolat, 1973 and Jean Lacouture, de

Gaulle, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 1969. 10 On this topic, see for instance: Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d'Espoir, Plon, Paris, 1999;

Krisztina Arató, Boglárka Koller, Európa utazása. Integrációtörténet, Gondolat Kiadó, Budapest, 2009 and András István Türke, Charles de Gaulle Európa-politikája. Az európai integráció konföderatív alternatívája, Europa Varietas Institute, Budapest, http://varietas.visuart.eu/charles_de_gaulle_europa_politikaja. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.)

11 René Rémond, Les droites en France, Aubier, Paris, 1982. 12 Ibidem, p. 107. 13 Ibidem, p. 110.



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were common among French intellectuals and politicians, especially in the inter-war era14. This is the era when not only right-wing Orléanists like André Tardieu, but also left-wing politicians like Léon Blum called for a stronger executive power15. Thus, Gaullism revived older political traditions that were not inherent to the Parliament-centered Republican culture16, but its anti-parliamentarism and its will to create a strong executive cannot be considered as its differentia specifica. It is not surprising then that there are scholars and followers who define Gaullism, using the very words of de Gaulle himself, as a “certain idea of France”, the ideal of French grandeur, or as a special approach to political power, meaning a strong executive, lead by the President who also has a direct relationship with the electors. Some others identify Gaullism with the superior interest of France, or as a set of values focused on foreign policy and the international status of the nation17. Serge Berstein, who wrote an extensive study about the history of Gaullism, also broke the concept down to its “periods”, talking about a wartime Gaullism, the Gaullism of the RPF era, Gaullism in power, neo-Gaullism etc. Analyzing Gaullism by its periods is very logical, as it facilitates the understanding of its pragmatism and its variable nature. “Variable” does not mean, though, that Gaullism is an unstable ideology: the General’s vision was quite constant throughout the decades. De Gaulle had a clear set of ideas and values by the time he began his political journey: he was already 50 years old in 1940, the moment of the symbolic kick-off of his career. He was a field officer, whose strategic thinking revolved around adaptability18. He knew that in order to carry out a strategic goal, tactics might vary according to the marge de maneouvre and to the tools at hand: this military thinking, which is rarely stressed, is the cornerstone of Gaullism, for it explains the “discrepancies”. For de Gaulle, political power (and the strong executive itself) was a mere tool for the strategic goal: the grandeur of France. Of course, he also needed a few conditions to be met, but these conditions were also subordinated to the strategic goal19. According to Serge Berstein, these two factors are the ones that are permanently present in Gaullism: the idea of a great

14 About French intellectuals and their political ideas see: Tony Judt, Befejezetlen múlt. A

francia értelmiség 1944-1956, XX. Századi Intézet, Budapest, 2008. 15 Tony Judt, Befejezetlen múlt…cit.; René Rémond, Les droites…cit., p. 192; and

Zsuzsanna Boros, Rendszerváltozások Franciaországban, L'Harmattan, Budapest, 2011. 16 See for instance: François Furet, Mona Ozouf, “Préface”, Le siècle de l'avènement

républicain, Gallimard, Paris, 1993, pp. 7-22. 17 For possible definitions see: Jean-Christian Petitfils, Le Gaullisme, Presses Universitaires

de France, Que sais-je?, Paris, 1981. 18 See for instance: Charles de Gaulle, Le fil de l'épée, Librairie Plon, Paris, 1971. 19 Gaullism, its goals, conditions and tools are explained by Jean-Christian Petitfils, Le

Gaullisme, cit.



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and an independent France, assured by a strong executive, headed by a quasi monarchic President20.

What is Orbánism?

The personal influence of Viktor Orbán on Fidesz' is tremendous: he is the most important factor that keeps the party together. Due to the fact that this symbiosis is a widely known phenomenon, we will henceforward use the term “Fidesz” as the equal of “Orbánism” and vice versa21. There are numerous works on the history of Fidesz22, on Viktor Orbán himself23, and we can even find a study or two on Fidesz political values and narratives24. But if one wants to explore “Orbánism”, or the ideology of Fidesz in its entirety, one has to face difficulties. At first, the most apparent attribute of “Orbánism” is its extreme variability: contemporary historiography rightly points out Fidesz’ and Orbán’s evolution from liberalism to right-wing populism, going through national liberalism25. Fidesz started out as a generational liberal party at the time of the Hungarian transition. The party began to shift to the right around 1993-1994, when the other liberal party, the SZDSZ (Alliance of Free Democrats) started to cooperate with the post-communist Hungarian Socialist Party (MSZP). This strategic move was all the more justified by the collapse, in 1994, of the then-largest party of the right, József Antall's MDF (Hungarian Democratic Forum). The new Fidesz dubbed itself Fidesz-Hungarian Civic Party (Fidesz-MPP) and phrased its messages for the “citizens”. This national-liberal turn lasted until 2002, when the MSZP-SZDSZ coalition ousted the Fidesz-MDF-FKgP coalition from government with the electoral promise of a “social transition”. From then on, Fidesz adopted a more populist approach, going as far as to promise a 14th month pension to senior citizens in 2006.

20 Serge Berstein, Histoire…cit., p. 511. 21 By the way, “Orbánism” is a practically non-existent word in Hungarian politics. As

Hungarian political science has not explored the ideology of Fidesz and Orbán in a comprehensive research project, the use of the term Orbánism refers to “Orbán-style politics”, and its use is for convenience.

22 For example: Attila Wéber, A Fidesz-jelenség, Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, 1996 and Edith Oltay, Fidesz and the Reinvention of the Hungarian Center-Right, Századvég Kiadó, Budapest, 2012.

23 József Debreczeni, Orbán Viktor, Osiris Kiadó, Budapest, 2002. 24 Examples: Ildikó Szabó, “A nemzet fogalmi konstrukciója a Fidesz diskurzusaiban 1998

és 2006 között”, Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 3, 2007, pp. 129-159; Idem, “Rendszerváltás és nemzeti tematika”, Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 2, 2005, pp. 89-110; Márton Szabó (ed.), Fideszvalóság. L'Harmattan Kiadó, Budapest, 2006.

25 For a comprehensive history of Fidesz see: Edith Oltay, Fidesz…cit.



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The history of Orbán's Fidesz is the history of 25 dynamic years. For heuristic purposes, we call Orbánism the post-2010 era, precisely the moment when noticeable Gaullist references appear in Fidesz’ discourse. The limits of our analogy have to be clearly stated from the very beginning: while Gaullism is a consistent political resource, “Orbánism” is a very evasive target that does not have yet the benefit of the historical perspective. In matters of foreign policy Viktor Orbán himself defined his political vision as a military one26. Should we take this at face value? What is the strategic goal of Fidesz politics, how to define and operationalize the “interests of the Hungarian people” so dear to Fidesz politicians? Opponents often depicted de Gaulle as a genuine Machiavellian figure (going so far as to treat the 1958 constitutional change a coup d'État), and only time could soften or change this perception. Will it be the case for Fidesz as well? Last but not least, our inquiry makes use of a diachronic political comparison. Therefore, similarities and discrepancies between the terms compared have always to be considered in their own context: what might have been considered as progressive in 1958, might be considered very conservative in the 2010s.

SEVEN CHARACTERISTICS OF GAULLISM AND THEIR PRESENCE

IN ORBÁN'S POST-2010 HUNGARY

National Grandeur and the Importance of Foreign Policy

National grandeur is an explicitly stated goal for both de Gaulle and Orbán. De Gaulle's opinion on the matter is well-known: “France cannot be France without greatness”. According to the Wikileaks cables, Orbán told U.S. diplomats that “it's not complicated – we are telling the people that we will restore the nation's greatness”27. The political messages and statements are similar, indeed, even if Orbán uttered his message in front of a relatively restricted public, while de Gaulle wrote it down very publicly. But their motivations and the political opportunities available to them differ dramatically. The idea of French grandeur is more than a simple national idea. It aims at influencing humanity in its entirety and being an important international power. Ever since the Enlightenment, France was in the front line of cultural

26 HVG.HU, “Orbán: “az én filozófiám katonai természetű””, Hvg.hu, 30 May 2013,

http://hvg.hu/itthon/20130530_Orban_az_en_filozofiam_katonai_termeszetu. (Downloaded: 30 May 2013.)

27 08BUDAPEST391, https://wikileaks.org/cable/2008/04/08BUDAPEST391.html



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and political innovation in the Western world. France’s ambition for influence demands more than the idea of a respectable, independent nation. In the 20th century, Gaullism's major dilemma stemmed from the fact that France seemed to have lost the means to exercise its role as a great power – re-requiring these means would therefore be in the center of all Gaullian efforts28. De Gaulle never turned or argued against the Western world, even when he deemed it necessary to conduct an independent foreign and defense policy. In turn, Viktor Orbán recurrently argues that the Western world is in decline (a common conservative motive since Oswald Spengler's The decline of the West). Orbán says that Hungary has to be in phase with “the Eastern winds” that blow. With this argument, he revives an ancient Hungarian debate about Hungary as a ferryboat-country that floats between East and West but never anchors anywhere29. When it comes to Hungary’s foreign policy orientation Orbán has in mind not only economic or political interests of the country, but also values. In 2014, in a widely criticized speech delivered at the annual Summer School held in Băile Tuşnad, Romania, Orbán didn’t hesitate to criticize Western liberal values claiming that “the new state that we are constructing in Hungary is an illiberal state, a non-liberal state”, stating that “the most popular topic in thinking today is trying to understand how systems that are not Western, not liberal, not liberal democracies and perhaps not even democracies, can nevertheless make their nations successful. The stars of the international analysts today are Singapore, China, India, Russia and Turkey. And I think that our political community recognised and touched on this challenge correctly several years ago”30. The difference is crucial. While harshly criticizing French politics under the 3rd and the 4th Republics, de Gaulle never gave up on the democratic ideals of his era or on democracy per se and never tried to look for foreign, even less for Eastern political models. This topic can only be interpreted in conjunction with Hungarian history and Central-European identity problems. For nations in Central and Eastern Europe, what was really at stake was not the regional influence or power, but the mere existence as a nation-state. Historians like István Bibó31 or Jenő Szűcs32 strongly underlined the differences between Western and Eastern

28 See: Jean-Christian Petitfils, Le Gaullisme, cit. 29 Concerning this metaphor, see Tamás Csapody, “Kompország politikusai: Koppányok és

Szent Istvánok. A kompország és a Koppány-politikai metafora elemzése”, Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 1, 2006, pp. 179-200 and particularly p. 187.

30 Viktor Orbán, Prime Minister Viktor Orbán’s Speech at the 25th Bálványos Summer Free University and Student Camp, http://www.kormany.hu/en/the-prime-minister/the-prime-minister-s-speeches/prime-minister-viktor-orban-s-speech-at-the-25th-balvanyossummer-free-university-and-student-camp. (Downloaded: 25 January, 2015.)

31 István Bibó, A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága. Argumentum Kiadó – Bibó István Szellemi Műhely, 2011, p. 80.

32 Jenő Szűcs, “Vázlat Európa három történeti régiójáról”, Helyünk Európában. Nézetek és



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Europe as regards to nations' greatness and state resilience, explaining that Eastern European nations always suffered from an existential fear, exhibiting often an antidemocratic nationalism33. On the contrary, as noticed by Serge Berstein, General de Gaulle created the bases of a democratic, Republican and “modern French nationalism”34.

Some also argue that foreign policy is extremely important for both Orbán and De Gaulle We should not spend much time with arguing that de Gaulle considered foreign policy as the most important policy of all35. Ervin Csizmadia suggested mutatis mutandis the same for Viktor Orbán's Fidesz36, by saying that a “European vision” became a very important point for the post-2010 Fidesz, because adversaries have no such vision – and that this is one of the main reasons why Fidesz and Orbán could remain so popular. Let us accept the argument that both movements consider foreign policy as (some sort of) an identity-building priority. In this case, we must acknowledge that they cannot use identical methods for acquiring the means for such an international policy. One could argue that stressing the benefits of a “Hungarian-owned economy”, a clear goal for the Fidesz government, is an attempt at acquiring the necessary means. However, in military terms, Hungary relies heavily on NATO's defense capacities, which is, strictly speaking, an unequivocal constraint on national sovereignty. In contrast, de Gaulle knew that international influence and French-style “grandeur” are not possible without a totally independent defense capacity37. Hungary has nor the means, neither the ambition to become a great nuclear power, and, as a Central European middle-sized country, its margin for maneuver is very limited. The “West is in crisis” argument, though, might be able to hide the geopolitical realities of the region. Is it what Bibó called the “deformation of the political character”, meaning that there is no balance between the real, the possible and the desirable38? This is my central argument against the equals sign between Orbánism and Gaullism. Hungary exercised the role of great power once, but has not done so for a few hundred years (or not without external help, like that of the Hapsburg), whereas France has always been a great power. Even today, as a full member of the Security Council of the UN, France is among the five most

koncepciók a 20. századi Magyarországon (2. kötet), Magvető Könyvkiadó, Budapest, 1986, pp. 515-568.

33 István Bibó, A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága…cit., p. 83. 34 Serge Berstein, Histoire…cit., p. 45, pp. 57-63, pp. 293-297 and p. 396. 35 See: Krisztina Arató, Boglárka Koller, Európa utazása…cit.; Ferenc Gazdag,

Franciaország története 1945-1995, Zrínyi Kiadó, Budapest, 1996; and Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d'Espoir, Plon, Paris, 1999.

36 Ervin Csizmadia, A tusnádfürdői ív, http://www.meltanyossag.hu/node/2422. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.)

37 Jean-Christian Petitfils, Le Gaullisme, cit. 38 István Bibó, A kelet-európai kisállamok nyomorúsága…cit., p. 88.



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influential states in the international system. Thus, though both movements have special regards towards foreign policy, we also understand that their political opportunities are different. As Béla Bíró explained, Central and Eastern European nationalisms should not be analyzed with the same lenses as Western nationalisms. For Bíró, civic and liberal nationalism is the narrative of dominant groups, while cultural nationalism is the claim of marginalized groups. This should explain why France offers the best illustration of the former and Central-Eastern Europe is predominantly exhibiting the latter39. Moreover, solid, resilient Western nations are more preoccupied by strengthening democracy, while that is not the case in Hungary: only the national issue could serve as a stabilizing factor for prevailing Hungarian political systems in frequent times of crises40. Moreover, republican traditions are not yet an inherent part of Hungarian political culture41 as as it is the case in France42.

Anti-Liberalism, Populism and “Etatisme”

The critique of the free-market economy is a clear similarity between Gaullism and Orbánism, along with anti-communism and the appeal to social unity. For instance, the Hungarian Constitution (art. XVII. [1]) stresses the need for employers and employees to cooperate in order to ensure a sustainable national economy. During the postwar reconstruction and during his presidency, “workers' participation” was an idea dear to de Gaulle as well. How far this similarity goes? According to Pierre Rosanvallon, anti-liberalism43 is part of the core of the French political culture. By virtue of a Jacobin tradition, French are attached to the idea of a state which in the framework of a democratic polity, is the organizer of social and/or economic progress44: even those politicians will willingly use the powers of the state who are otherwise considered as “liberals”

39 Béla Bíró, “A nemzet mítoszai”, Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 1-2, 2004, pp. 223-231. 40 Ildikó Szabó, “Rendszerváltás és nemzeti tematika”, cit., pp. 95-96. 41 Ibidem. 42 Sudhir Hazareesingh, „‘Who Belongs to the French Republic, and to Whom does it

Belong?’”, European Journal of Political Theory, no. 3, 2004, pp. 473-480, http://ept.sagepub.com/content/3/4/473.extract. (p. 475.)

43 Pierre Rosanvallon, “A francia „illiberalizmus” alapjai és problémái”, in Idem, Civil társadalom, demokrácia, politikum. Történelmek és elméletek. Válogatott tanulmányok, Napvilág Kiadó, Budapest, 2007, pp. 115-124.

44 About French (intellectuals') positive attitudes towards the state as a benevolent actor, see for example: Sarah Waters, „French Intellectuals and Globalisation: A War of Worlds”, French Cultural Studies, vol. 22, no. 4, 2011, pp. 303-320, http://frc.sagepub.com/ content/22/4/303.



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(like former president Nicolas Sarkozy, who, in his Testimony proudly describes his interventions to market processes as the economic minister of President Chirac45 proudly recalls his strategies of economic intervention while he was minister of the Economy under Chirac presidency) Anti-liberalism, at least in the economic sense, is also an important feature of Hungarian political culture. The legacy of socialism is long lasting when it comes to social expectations towards the state. The majority of Hungarian citizens prefer left-wing economic policies46, but at the same time, they are quite mistrustful vis-à-vis the state. Fidesz was well aware of this ambivalence when it began to incorporate a social agenda (after 2002-2003) into its program47. What are the differences then? This is an issue where readers should be very much aware of the diachronic nature of our comparison. Orbán and de Gaulle, in a manner of speaking, reflect the expectations and the values of the era they belong to, all the while responding to electoral expectations and internal and external economic pressures. De Gaulle's epoch was the era of rebuilding, of (mostly) Keynesian economics and of the construction of Western welfare states. While de Gaulle indeed had to “accept necessary austerity measures” or liberal policies, the economic environment of his time was dubbed Trente Glorieuses and it was consistent with his personal ideas and beliefs. On the other hand, Orbán serves as PM in an era of deep economic crisis, when Keynesian economics and the concept of the welfare state have long since been displaced by the neoliberal paradigm. Globalization and the rise of neoliberalism in the 80s create a special environment for a capitalizing country in transition like Hungary. Not only the historical setting, but also religious-cultural differences have to be taken into account when drawing a comparison between de Gaulle’s and Orbán’s policies. While Gaullism is inspired by a Catholic social culture, Fidesz (and Orbán himself) is part of a Protestant one. We do know that these religious differences might have a strong impact on the economic vision of (political) actors48, therefore they are worthy of attention. De Gaulle was and remained a right-wing politician attached to both Christian and social values49, even when, for example, he accepted the

45 See: Nicolas Sarkozy, Vallomások. Századvég Kiadó, Budapest, 2006. 46 About electoral attitudes see: András Körösényi et al., A magyar politikai rendszer,

Budapest, Osiris, 2003. 47 Ildikó Szabó, “A nemzet fogalmi konstrukciója…cit”, p. 150. 48 Max Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism, Unwin Hyman, London-

Boston, 1930, http://xroads.virginia.edu/~HYPER/weber/toc.html. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.)

49 M. Géza Szebeni, “Keresztény-szociális elemek Charles de Gaulle társadalmi víziójában”, Külügyi Szemle, Summer 2011, pp. 76-90.



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necessary austerity measures in 195850. De Gaulle is widely considered as having played a crucial role in the creation of the postwar French welfare state after World War II. While Fidesz used a populist, left-wing social discourse while in opposition, its economic policy in government is – from an ideological point of view – quite complex. The “unorthodox economic policy” of Orbánism is a mixture of neo-liberal elements (flat tax, severe cuts in social security, total delegation of social responsibilities to local governments, austerity in the education system), populist elements (administrative cuts in household expenses) and state intervention (transformation of markets through regulation, nationalizations, creation of state monopolies, like in the case of the “national tobacco shops”). Strictly speaking, while Gaullism, in an era of economic growth, urged to the creation of the French welfare state, Orbánism, in an era of economic crisis, strove to dismantle the elements of the Hungarian welfare state.

Antiparliamentarism

Both de Gaulle and Orbán51 seem to think that they have a personal legitimacy that is independent from parliamentary parties, that is valid even when they are in opposition or out of (party) politics (Considering his role played during the war, de Gaulle qualifies for a charismatic leader). But – contrary to de Gaulle or subsequent Gaullist movements – Fidesz is defining itself and it is defined by its leader52 as a political party. In this context, but within these limits, antiparliamentarism and the need for a strong executive is another trait that might bring together Fidesz and Gaullism. The 1958 French and the 2012 Hungarian constitutions are both institutional responses to political crises. Viktor Orbán’s response is not as coherent as de Gaulle’s: it does not widen the margin for maneuver of the executive as de Gaulle’s reform did, mostly because the new Hungarian basic law makes frequent use of the two-thirds super-majority rule (for instance, the creation and modification of income tax brackets necessitate a two-thirds super-majority in Parliament). In fact, the “Westminsterization” of the Hungarian politics is not the result of the constitutional revision, but merely the circumstantial outcome of the strong

50 Where is the border between tactics and strategic, “necessary measures”? Serge Berstein

notes that economic policy was also a means for de Gaulle in the service of “grandeur”, Serge Berstein, Histoire…cit., p. 317.

51 Ildikó Szabó, “A nemzet fogalmi konstrukciója…cit”, pp. 136-137. 52 Viktor Orbán, Fundamentumok, 2009.



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parliamentary support the current government enjoys53. If the government does not hold this majority, the Parliament (and the opposition) regains its influence, even under the new basic law. Moreover, the new Hungarian electoral system is highly ambiguous: according to researchers, it is more disproportionate then the previous one54, and according to political analysts, a steady, 5-6 % lead in the popular vote might easily lead to a two thirds majority55. If that is the case, the long term Westminsterization of the Hungarian political system is a clear possibility, but the constant destabilization and redrafting of the political system is not that unrealistic either – such a solution would be the exact contrary to what de Gaulle wished in France. One can also argue that both de Gaulle and Orbán tried to limit the capacity of independent bodies to control the action of the government. However, the direction is different: in 1958, within the parliament-centered French political culture, the creation of the Constitutional Council was nevertheless a step toward strengthening and widening the separation of powers, while in post-2010 Hungary, the Constitutional Court was stripped of many of the prerogatives it held previously.

Charismatic Leadership and Direct Democracy

Both Orbánism and Gaullism try to create a direct link with the people while circumventing the Parliament, and offer the solution of the homme providentiel. Both the French and Hungarian political cultures are keen on strong leaders. In Hungary, the communist dictator János Kádár is still one of the most popular political figures of the 20th century56. According to a poll conducted in 2013 in France, 87% of respondents said that the country needed a strong leader to make order57. Thus, the image of a strong de Gaulle and of a

53 Péter Ondré, „Westminsteri kirándulás”, Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 1, 2012, pp. 7-31. 54 László Imre Kovács, Péter Bence Stumpf, “Az arányosságról a 2014-es parlamenti

választás után”, Metszetek, no. 3, 2014, http://metszetek.unideb.hu/az_aranyossagrol_ kovacs_laszlo_imre_stumpf_peter_bence_2014_03. (Downloaded: 22 March 2015.)

55 Gábor Török, “Aktuális belpolitikai események értékelése”, Info Rádió – Aréna, 27 May 2013, http://inforadio.hu/arena/4725/1/podcasting. (Downloaded: 3 June 2013.)

56 See: MEDIÁN, A 20. század értékelése, 29 April 1999, http://www.median.hu/object. 75f7c814-dc6e-4309-b2d5-43c0a8ab2da0.ivy. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.) and DeDi P., “Kádár zsírját nyögi a magyar”, Index.hu, 25 May 2012, http://index.hu/belfold/2012/05/25/kadar_zsirjat_nyogi_a_magyar/. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.)

57 ATLANTICO.FR, “87% des Français attendent un ‘vrai chef pour remettre de l’ordre’: y a-t-il une tentation autoritaire en France ?”, Atlantico.fr, 30 January 2013, http://www.atlantico.fr/decryptage/t-vraiment-tentation-autoritaire-en-france-pascal-perrineau-philippe-braud-maxime-tandonnet-622299.html. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.)



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strong Viktor Orbán, communicating directly with the people, is not alien to these political cultures. However, the differences are significant. Most importantly, Orbán makes frequent use of “popular consultations”58, while de Gaulle combined the recourse to politically and legally binding referendums with a continuous personal presence among the citizens59. The intent may be the same, but the consequences are not. Referenda are verifiable consultations; Orbán's national consultations are not. Referenda have a clear legal status and legally rationalized political consequences, consultations are often fluid. Let us remember that de Gaulle used referendums and general elections in order to strengthen and renew his legitimacy, and once he lost a referendum – in 1969 – he stepped down. In Hungary, Fidesz used referenda only for tactical reasons, when in opposition, like in 2008, in order to gain momentum or to stall government decisions or reforms.

Traditionally, Fidesz is not an adept of direct democracy. Of course, Rousseauism may have its disciples in Hungary too, but they do not count among Fidesz politicians60. Traditionally, Fidesz favors parliamentary sovereignty, governmentalism61, majority decision-making, but not two-thirds majority consensus politics. (Of course, should Fidesz lose an election and retain at least 1/3 of parliamentary votes, Fidesz most probably will insist on consensual policy-making and the two-thirds super-majority rules will force the government in office to cooperate with Fidesz.) Moreover, the new Hungarian constitution makes it more difficult for political forces to initiate a successful referendum, as the participation threshold for successful referenda has been increased to 50% of all voters (former rules stipulated that a referendum is equally successful if 25% of all voters vote in one direction, regardless of participation level).

Legality and Legitimacy

Gaullist and Maurassist ideologies often stress the opposition between the pays légal and the pays réel – that is, the formal-legal political legitimacy vs. the charismatic-traditional type of legitimacy62. In de Gaulle's case, this was

58 Mária Melinda Forrai, Erzsébet Király, „Szájer: sikeres volt a nemzeti konzultáció”, mr1-

kossuth.hu, 3 April 2011, http://www.mr1-kossuth.hu/hirek/itthon/szajer-sikeres-volt-az-uj-alkotmanyrol-szolo-nemzeti-konzultacio.html. (Downloaded: 10 June 2012.)

59 Sudhir Hazareesingh, In the Shadow of the General. Modern France and the Myth of de Gaulle, Oxford University Press, 2012.

60 András Körösényi et al., A magyar politikai rendszer, cit., pp. 76-79. 61 Ibidem, p. 83. 62 Cf. the theory of charismatic legitimacy as offered by Max Weber: Max Weber, Gazdaság

és társadalom – A megértő szociológia alapvonalai 1. Szociológiai kategóriatan, Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1987., pp. 221-225, pp. 248-260, pp. 271-275, and



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never a radical opposition63: when he failed to acquire a formal democratic legitimacy on occasion of a referendum he himself initiated, somewhat unnecessarily, he stepped down. Fidesz also often contrasts legality and legitimacy. One illustrative instance is the party's discourse during the 2006 political crisis or later political declarations about the “illegitimate” Gyurcsány government64. In 2002, Orbán declared in a widely-cited speech that the mother country cannot be in opposition. Some even argue that Fidesz promotes a transcendental vision of history65, as a fight between good and bad. News articles or news reports sometimes throw light on the origins of this political eschatology. For instance, Viktor Orbán said in late 2013 that he and his party feel the need to introduce detailed policy provisions in the constitution – rules that are not usually to be found in the constitutions –, in order to prevent a future socialist government to change them when in power66. This practically means that Fidesz is willing to limit the effect of a democratic election in order to ensure that its policies are maintained in the long term. In another parliamentary speech, Orbán added that in the 1980s he did not fight dictatorship, but the communists, that is the predecessors of the current socialists67, thus blurring the line between adversity and political competition. Moreover, Fidesz often refers to the Socialist Party as a political party who serves foreign interests (Moscow, Brussels), – de Gaulle thought the same about the communists (the difference is that Hungarian socialists might see “Brussels” as a reference, but they are not controlled by it – while the PCF was directly controlled by Moscow). In turn, contrary to what de Gaulle did in 1958, when he overtly limited the possibility of a communist victory by creating the absolute majority electoral system, we should not forget that Fidesz did not make the victory of the MSZP impossible, even if the new electoral system favors the biggest party in the country, which is currently the Fidesz.

Idem, Gazdaság és társadalom – A megértő szociológia alapvonalai 2. A gazdaság, a társadalmi rend és a társadalmi hatalom formái. (Az uralom szociológiája 1.), Közgazdasági és Jogi Könyvkiadó, 1996, pp. 47-60, 205-250.

63 Jean-Christian Petitfils, Le Gaullisme, cit., p. 51. 64 “Budapest Police Deny Brutality”, bbc.co.uk, 24 October 2006,

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/6080188.stm. (Downloaded: 25 January 2015.) 65 Zita Draskovich, “Politikai transzcendencia. A Fidesz valóságértelmezése a 2002-es

választási kampánytól a Szövetség megszületésééig”, in Márton Szabó (ed.), Fideszvalóság, cit., pp. 129-142.

66 ERDELYIP, “Alkotmányba foglalja a rezsicsökkentést a Fidesz”, 444.hu, 20 September 2013, http://444.hu/2013/09/20/alkotmanyba-foglalja-a-rezsicsokkentest-a-fidesz/. (Downloaded: 21 October 2013.)

67 “Orbán: a szocialisták ne oktassanak minket demokráciáról! + videó”, fidesz.hu, 5 November 2012, http://www.fidesz.hu/hirek/2012-11-05/orban-a-szocialistak-ne-oktassan ak-minket-demokraciarol-video/. (Downloaded: 25 January 2015.)



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New Constitutions and their Legitimacies

Both politicians and political movements want(ed) to reshape their countries in terms of politics, institutions and international role. Both politicians had the possibility to do so. For instance, both of them created and offered a new constitution to their country. One is already proven to be stable and long lasting. On the other, the jury is still out. The Gaullian system is based on a wider legitimacy than Viktor Orbán's new Constitution, as de Gaulle made sure that a binding referendum be organized to validate the text. This is why François Mitterrand accusation of a coup d’État didn’t stand against the 1958 Constitution, nor did the allegations against the famous 1962 referendum on the direct election of the president: no constitutional interpretation could outrank the democratic judgment of the electorate and therefore the Constitutional Council did not opposed the entry into force of the direct election of the president68. In turn, the legitimacy of the constitution of Viktor Orbán is solely based on the legitimacy of a parliamentary vote, which is in turn based on an outstanding electoral victory in 2010. While the legality and the parliamentary legitimacy cannot be debated, it does not prevent opposition parties from criticizing the new Constitution as the constitution of one party (as we've seen, without a two-thirds majority, a socialist government's room for manoeuvre would be severely limited by the new constitution). Therefore, the constitution of Viktor Orbán is much more vulnerable than the constitution of the 5th Republic. Should he lose an election, the new government, the new majority might say that the legitimacy of the constitution is void because now the people (the electorate) want something else69. Of course, 2015 is just the fourth year of the life of the new Hungarian constitution: again, we have no historical distance to know whether there will be a Hungarian François Mitterrand to make peace with it.

Approaches to History

Perhaps the greatest difference between Gaullism and Orbánism is their approach to history. Gaullism is a highly intellectual ideology, with a deep

68 Décision n° 62-20 DC du 06 novembre 1962, http://www.conseilconstitutionnel. fr/conseil-constitutionnel/francais/les-decisions/acces-par-date/decisions-depuis-1959/1962/62-20-dc/decision-n-62-20-dc-du-06-novembre-1962.6398.html. (Downloaded on 22 March 2015.)

69 Some opposition politicians raised the possibility of a future absolute majority adopting a new Constitution, without (!) possessing a two-thirds super-majority in Parliament – which would be, formally, an evidently anti-constitutional process.



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historical perspective. Charles de Gaulle, according to all of his biographies and to his own writings, considered French history in its entirety70. For him, Clovis, Louis XIV, the revolution of 1789, Robespierre, Napoleon and the 3rd Republic were equally part of the nation's history. Being born to a family with a clear royalist sensibility, de Gaulle seems to have saddened his mother with the fact that he accepted the republican political system as such71. In fact, de Gaulle refused to enter the debates between the “two nations”, that is the debate between monarchists and Republicans. His Constitution refers to the Revolution and the preamble of the 1946 Constitution, while his political system is the synthesis of the will of “both nations”. Of course, his synthesis covers up the fact that he believed in one united and undivided nation that is capable of doing and achieving great things in history. In France, there is a consensus when it comes to big issues like the Revolution, the Republic, and since de Gaulle, there is an institutional framework that is an acceptable synthesis to almost every relevant political actor. Since the 1981 election of François Mitterrand, we might call this synthesis the Republican compromise72. The Republic in France has a widely-accepted normative connotation, elevating it to the level of “common national values”. Under such circumstances, the debate of the “two nations” seems to be an issue of the past: the Republic has not only a consensual form of government, but a common set of values that penetrated the public as well as the private sphere73. In turn, Hungary is unable to demonstrate such a compromise concerning the national issue and the past is not closed in terms of common knowledge and interpretation74. Not only politicians, but even scholars argue that the “nation” as used by Fidesz until 2003 was a notion that excluded those who were not voters of Fidesz. The party later demonstrated a wider interpretation of the “nation” in order to rise above other parties75. Fidesz politicians frequently call their opponents traitors and accuse them of representing foreign interests76. (However, this is also circumstantial: the foreign policy of Fidesz is being criticized as “too pro-Russian” since the beginning of 2014, the outbreak of the Ukrainian conflict, therefore those harmful foreign interests, as represented by opposition forces, mostly mean

70 Maurice Agulhon, „De Gaulle et l'histoire de France”, Vingtième Siècle. Revue d'histoire,

no. 53, Jan.-Mar. 1997, pp. 3-12. 71 Marc Ferro, de Gaulle expliqué aujourd'hui, Éditions du Seuil, Paris, 2010, p. 36. 72 Eszter Petronella Soós, „A köztársaság-fogalom értelmezésének szintjei

Franciaországban”, Politikatudományi Szemle, no. 2, 2013, pp. 51-69. 73 Sudhir Hazareesingh, „‘Who Belongs to the French Republic…cit.”, pp. 473-480,

http://ept.sagepub.com/content/3/4/473.extract. 74 Ildikó Szabó, “Rendszerváltás és nemzeti tematika”, cit., pp. 89-110. 75 Idem, “A nemzet fogalmi konstrukciója…cit.”, pp. 132-144. 76 See: Ibidem, pp. 145-148.



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“Brussels” and “Washington” in contemporary Fidesz discourse, because Moscow would be too controversial to evoke.) Fidesz is more likely to “pick” things out in Hungarian history and put them on a pedestal, like the Holy Crown or Horthy's regime, and is more likely to approach the idea of nation in an exclusive manner. The preamble of the new basic law is an example of that vision of history. We are not only talking about rejecting certain dictatorial epochs but whole political traditions in Hungarian history. Therefore, the approach of Fidesz to history is different from the synthetic Gaullian approach. Orbánism is not a synthesis, it clearly takes its stand in the debate of the “two nations”.

Conclusion

During our analysis, all “striking” and “visible” similarities turned out to be differences as well, clearly suggesting that an analogy does not mean identity. The “example” and the “instrumentalization” hypotheses (or a combination of them) are therefore all potentially admissible. The comparison of Orbán's and de Gaulle's attitudes towards democracy, parliamentarism, referenda, majority decision making, super-majority voting and legitimacy is particularly useful for a better understanding of the functioning of the new Hungarian political system and the democratic attitudes of Fidesz, including its subtle and not so subtle attempts at limiting the room for maneuver of any next government. A further comparative analysis has to focus on four important questions. First, we have to clearly determine the notion of systemic crisis, work on the theoretical relationship between regime change and “crisis”, and define the differences between the pre-1958 France and the pre-2010 Hungary. Second, the political culture of Hungary and France often show similar traits regardless of Gaullism and Orbánism. For instance, both political cultures welcome strong leaders. This is a similarity that needs to be explained and described in details. Third, both movements should be contextualized even more when compared: the relationship of Gaullism with the Republican idea of France and the relationship of Fidesz with the Hungarian conservative tradition cannot be forgotten. Fourth, Viktor Orbán's Fidesz is not the only movement that is compared to de Gaulle and Gaullism. For instance, Vladimir Putin's Russia has also been compared to de Gaulle's France from different aspects77.

77 For example: Robert Skidelsky, “The New de Gaulle?”, The Guardian.com, 5 December 2007, http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2007/dec/05/thenewdegaulle (Downloaded: 23 January 2014) and, Matthew Evangelista, Is Putin the New de Gaulle? A Comparison of the Chechen and Algerian Wars, 2005, http://falcon.arts.cornell. edu/mae10/Is-Putin-the-New-de-Gaulle.pdf. (Downloaded: 23 January 2014.)



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The Gaullist analogy, might be interesting in the case of the semi-presidential Romania as well. Explaining why Gaullism is such a popular comparative basis in the Central and Eastern Europe, might be another important step towards a better understanding politics in the region.

On the Ideological Incompatibilities

of Distributive Justice

ALEXANDRU VOLACU1

INTRODUCTION Distributive justice is a very complex idea, having shaped much of the

literature within analytic political philosophy in the post-Rawlsian age. But can we find a single all-encompassing definition for distributive justice? Knowles for instance defines it as “how wealth and income, goods and services should be distributed or allocated amongst the population of a state”2. But although the definition seems to give an adequate prima facie characterization of the subject at hand, it is too narrow as (1) it presumes that the agent benefiting from the distribution must necessarily be a citizen, (2) it presumes that the setting of distributive justice must be the state and (3) it suggests that wealth, income, goods and services form an exhaustive list of distributive units. All of these assumptions lead to an implausibly narrow view of distributive justice. Elizabeth Anderson has a different approach which does not suffer from these defficiencies and manages to capture the central debates within the distributive justice literature. She claims that:

“Theories of distributive justice must specify two things: a metric and a

rule. The metric characterizes the type of good subject to demands of distributive justice. The rule specifies how that good should be distributed”3.

1 I would like to thank Mihaela Miroiu for valuable comments on an earlier draft of this

paper and the journal’s anonymous reviewers for comments on the final version of the paper. I maintain full responsibility for any remaining shortcomings. This work was supported by the Sectoral Operational Programme for Human Resources Development 2007-2013, co-financed by the European Social Fund, under the project number POSDRU/159/1.5/S/134650 with the title “Doctoral and Postdoctoral Fellowships for young researchers in the fields of Political, Administrative and Communication Sciences and Sociology”.

2 Dudley Knowles, Political Philosophy, Routledge, London, 2001, p. 177. 3 Elizabeth Anderson, “Justifying the Capabilities Approach to Justice”, in Harry

Brighouse, Ingrid Robeyns (eds.), Measuring Justice: Primary Goods and Capabilities, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2010, p. 81.

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Although the definition takes into account the fundamental elements of metrics and rules, it also fails to include some important elements which differ between competing theories, such as the site and scope of distributive justice. If we are permitted a high degree of abstractization, a general structure of definition might be the following: justice in setting A demands that B be distributed to C according to some pattern D, constrained by conditions of type E. The general structure captures all the major operationalizations of distributive justice. Thus, A can be thought of as the state, the community, the basic structure, the family, the world etc., solving the second criticism which I raised against Knowles’s definition. B represents the “currency”4 of distributive justice and it can range from welfare/utility to primary goods, resources, capabilities, advantage etc. C describes the agents which are eligible for benefiting from the proposed pattern of distribution. The agents can be only rational beings, which exist at the moment when the distribution comes into play, or they can be non-rational but sentient beings such as children, mentally disabled people and animals or rational/non-rational future or past people, which are either definitive or possible5. D represents the pattern of distribution. Four patterns are usually associated with distributive justice: egalitarianism, prioritarianism, sufficientarianism and desert. Finally, E can represent various constraints imposed on the distribution, which are not themselves a structural component of the pattern. An example of such a condition is Dworkin’s6 criterion of ambition sensitiveness, which constrains the egalitarian pattern by allowing compensation only for inequalities which are not a matter of option luck7.

Theories of distributive justice combine the five elements described above in different ways, which is why it is a Sisyphean task to ideologically pinpoint distributive justice in general. My claim in this paper is therefore simply that distributive justice is best reflected in one ideology (social-

4 In Cohen’s terminology (see Gerald Cohen, “On the Currency of Egalitarian Justice”,

Ethics, vol. 99, no. 4, 1989, p. 906). Sen uses the term “metric” and Frankfurt uses the term “parameter” to describe the same concept (see Amartya Sen, “Equality of What?”, in Robert Goodin, Phillip Pettit (eds.), Contemporary Political Philosophy: An Anthology, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1997, p. 484 and Harry Frankfurt, “Equality and Respect”, Social Research, vol. 64, no.1, 1997, p. 8).

5 Peter Vallentyne, “Distributive Justice”, in Robert Goodin, Phillip Pettit, Thomas Pogge (eds.), A Companion to Contemporary Philosophy (2nd edition), Blackwell Publishing, Malden, 2007, pp. 550-551.

6 Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality? Part 2: Equality of Resources”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 10, no. 4, 1981, pp. 283-345.

7 Volacu and Derviş for instance discuss two other such conditions, namely efficiency (as embodied by the Weak Pareto Principle) and fairness (in the sense of moral constraints on free-riding behavior) and show how they can be incorporated into pluralist welfare egalitarian theories (see Alexandru Volacu, Oana-Alexandra Derviş, “Pluralist Welfare Egalitarianism and the Expensive Tastes Objection”, presented at the 8th European Congress in Analytic Philosophy, Bucharest, 2014).

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democracy), some of its elements disqualify it from being compatible with other ideologies (right-wing libertarianism, socialism, conservatism and non-pluralistic ideologies8) and some particular interpretations of the five elements make them fully compatible and even required by other ideologies (environmentalism, feminism and cosmopolitanism). The term “compatibility” should be interpreted here as a property of the relation between principles, and more specifically between core principles of an ideology and core principles of distributive justice (which are operationalizations of its constitutive elements). When the relation is one of mutual exclusion, i.e. both principles cannot consistently share a common theoretical space, an ideology can be said to be “incompatible” with distributive justice. Compatibility between the principles of an ideology and the principles of distributive justice, does not however automatically imply that an ideology captures or promotes values related to distributive justice, but only that it does not reject them. A stronger relation between the two types of principles is one where an ideology requires certain distributive justice principles as part of its core.

As a first preliminary mention, it is necessary to underline that due to both spatial constraints and the vastness of the literature on both distributive justice and political ideologies, the analysis in this paper is focused on summarily presenting the major topics concerning the constitutive elements of distributive justice, thereby trading-off the possibility of a more thorough examination of the implications of each element of distributive justice on ideologies. The upshot of this approach is the provision of a broad, albeit thin, overview of all major salient contemporary ideologies in relation to distributive justice. The downside of the approach, however, is that none of the ideologies are explored in-depth, leaving the results obtained here to be opened to challenges under a more profound analysis.

Secondly, a methodological issue arises when seeking to map political theories (as is the family of distributive justice theories), which usually have a very abstract content, with political ideologies, which have a more practical nature and differ in interpretations on a case-by-case basis. This differentiation in interpretation refers to the fact that it is not clear where we should seek the expression of the ideology in question, which is both (1) representative for the ideology as a whole and (2) effectively action-guiding, in the sense that political parties actually make use of the respective ideology. My proposal here is to attempt the mapping of distributive justice with ideological platforms of the most relevant parties guided by the respective ideologies9. In principle, I will

8 See Mihaela Miroiu, “Ideologii politice: o perspectivă etică”, in Idem (ed.), Ideologii

politice actuale, Polirom, Iaşi, 2012, pp.15-34 for the distinction between pluralistic ideologies, borderline ideologies and monist ideologies.

9 This procedure is frequently used in the spatial analysis of electoral competition to map the ideologies of political parties, and is often considered the most reliable (see Elias

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either use the ideologies of Europarties10 or the ideologies of the two major parties in the U.S.A11. While this approach has the disadvantage that it lacks a solid theoretical grounding of ideologies, it is preferable for the limited scope of the paper, since it seeks to depict an image of the actual employment of the idea of distributive justice in contemporary politics12.

The paper is structured as follows: in the 2nd section I discuss the patterns of distributive justice and show that the pattern element is incompatible with right-libertarianism, conservatism, anarchism. In the 3rd section I discuss the currency of distributive justice and argue that any relevant treatment of the currency in the contemporary literature on distributive justice will eliminate monist ideologies and American-style conservatism. In the 4th section I discuss the problem of responsibility in distributive justice and argue that it is incompatible with the socialist ideology. In the 5th section I discuss the site of distributive justice and argue that under some of the most common interpretations the family is included, thereby making second-wave feminism fully compatible with distributive justice. In the 6th section I discuss the scope of distributive justice. This section is divided into 3 sub-sections. In the first I discuss the problem of intergenerational justice, claiming that some interpretations of right-libertarianism, conservatism and anarchism should be rejected by the empirically possibilist view, but that the case would be different for conservatism in a definitivist view. In the second sub-section I discuss the problem of non-rational sentient beings as belonging to the scope of justice, claiming that while all pluralist ideologies do hold that non-rational human beings are owed moral duties, some versions of libertarianism, conservatism and anarchism could be incompatible with the introduction of non-rational non-human beings in the scope of justice. In the third sub-section I discuss the

Dinas, Costas Gemenis, “Measuring Parties’ Ideological Positions With Manifesto Data: A Critical Evaluation of the Competing Methods”, Party Politics, vol. 16, no. 4, 2010, pp. 427-450.

10 In the case of social democracy I will use the PES Declaration of Principles, adopted in 2011, in the case of European conservatism I use the Prague Declaration of AECR, adopted in 2009, in the case of socialism I use the Manifesto of the Party of the European Left, adopted in 2007, in the case of environmentalism I use the Manifesto of the European Green Party, adopted in 2009, in the case of Christian-democracy I use the EPP Party Platform adopted in 2012 and in the case of European liberalism I use the 2009-2014 ALDE Strategic Programme.

11 In the case of the two US parties I use the 2012 Republican Platform: http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_home/, accessed on 02.01.2014 and the 2012 Democratic Platform: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=101962, accessed on 02.01.2014.

12 However, in those cases where an ideology cannot be traced to any significant party from the above mentioned category (as in the case of libertarianism, feminism and cosmopolitanism for instance) I will appeal directly to their core theoretical foundations.



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problem of internationally owed duties, claiming that monist ideologies and on some issues conservatism is incompatible with the cosmopolitan view. In the 7th section I briefly describe the link between social democracy and the generic understanding of distributive justice, by appealing to a clear example where considerations of the latter type are captured by the contemporary social democratic ideology. In the 8th section I present the conclusions, which are structured according to ideologies, not elements of the general definition of distributive justice, as is the case in the rest of the paper.

PATTERNS OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

The pattern of a theory of distributive justice specifies how the currency should be distributed amongst eligible agents, in that it “specifies that a distribution is to vary along with some natural dimension”13.

As previously mentioned, four main families of patterns can be identified: (1) egalitarianism, which maintains that justice requires that people be equally well off in the currency of distribution1415, (2) prioritarianism, which holds that justice requires that we give additional weight to benefiting people the worst off they are16, (3) sufficientarianism, which holds that justice requires that everyone reach a certain threshold in regard to the currency, beyond which inequalities do not require compensation17 and (4) desert-based principles, which are based on some interpretation of desert, usually taking into account historical considerations such as effort, choices, contribution etc18.

13 Robert Nozick, Anarchy, State and Utopia, Blackwell Publishers, Oxford, 1974, p. 156. 14 Political philosophers sympathetic to this view usually adopt a pluralist version of

egalitarianism, claiming that while equality is the central value of justice, all things considered it would be better if in some cases other principles would also come into play (see Derek Parfit, “Equality and Priority”, Ratio (New Series), 3, 1997, p. 205). Pure egalitarians, who are value monists (i.e. they consider that equality is singularly relevant in considerations of justice) are vulnerable to various critiques, such as the levelling down objection (see Derek Parfit, “Another Defence of the Priority View”, Utilitas, vol. 24, no. 3, 2012, p. 399).

15 See Larry Temkin, “Iluminating Egalitarianism”, in Tom Christiano, John Christman (eds.), Contemporary Debates in Political Philosophy, Blackwell Publishing, Malden, 2009, pp. 155-178 for an overview.

16 Derek Parfit, “Equality...cit”, pp. 202-221. 17 See Harry Frankfurt, “Equality as a Moral Ideal”, Ethics, vol. 98, no. 1, 1987, pp. 21-43

and Roger Crisp, “Equality, Priority, and Compassion”, Ethics, vol. 113, no. 4, 2003, pp. 745-763.

18 See Louis Pojman, Owen McLeod, What Do We Deserve? A Reader on Justice and Desert, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1999.

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Can we use the pattern element to limit the set of ideologies compatible with distributive justice? Let us consider Nozickian libertarianism19, which bases its claims of justice on moral permissibility and more specifically on the entitlements which people have on holdings, respecting three principles: (1) justice in acquisition, (2) justice in transfer and (3) rectification of injustice in holdings20. First of all, Nozick challenges the neutrality of the term distributive justice, arguing that:

“hearing the term ‘distribution’, most people presume that some thing or mechanism uses some principle or criterion to give out a supply of things. [...] However, we are not in the position of children who have been given portions of pie by someone who now makes last minute adjustments to rectify carelss cutting. There is no central distribution, no person or group entitled to control all the resources, jointly deciding how they are to be doled out”21.

Thus, for Nozick the term distributive justice has a bias embedded

within its structure which, in his view, mistakenly assumes that there is indeed something to be distributed on moral grounds. His claim is that if we are in a state of the world B which comes into existence from a state of the world A which was just via a historical process where all property was acquired and transferred justly, the set of distributive units is void and thus there would be nothing to distribute. Further, Nozick clearly delineates his own theory of justice as entitlement from a patterned principle, which he claims that “almost every suggested principle of distributive justice is”22. The main thrust of Nozick’s argument against patterned principles is based on the fact that “no distributional patterned principle of justice can be continuously realized without continuous interference with people’s lives”23. Let us consider his famous Wilt Chamberlain example. In order to neutralize the inequalities which would be generated after a certain amount of time by Chamberlain’s arrangement, the state must do one of two things: (1) forcibly block the transfer of money from

19 I use Nozickian libertarianism here since it directly targets the issue of distributional patterns. Nevertheless, for this particular issue, other libertarian versions such as that of Friedrich Hayek, The Road to Serfdom, Routledge, Abington, 1944 or Murray Rothbard, For a New Liberty: The Libertarian Manifesto, Ludwig von Mises Institute, Auburn, 1973 share the same outlook. In fact, Rothbard actually criticizes Nozick for adhering to the idea of a minimal state as being too extensive, claiming that his sequences of evolution from the dominant protective agency to the ultraminimal state and from the ultraminimal state to the minimal state are morally impermissible since they violate people’s rights (Murray Rothbard, The Ethics of Liberty, New York University Press, New York, 1998, pp. 237-245).

20 Robert Nozick, Anarchy...cit, pp. 150-153. 21 Ibidem, p. 149. 22 Ibidem, p. 156. 23 Ibidem, p. 163.



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spectators to Chamberlain, which would be morally impermissible since it was consensual or (2) forcibly take Chamberlain’s money once they are in his possession, although they were voluntarily given to him by the spectators, through taxation. Nozick rules out taxation as morally impermissible, considering that “taxation of earnings from labor is on a par with forced labor”24. In other words, through taxation the state institutes a right of partial ownership in the individual, which goes fundamentally against one of the two major principles of any libertarian theory, i.e. self-ownership25. Thus, regardless of the actual interpretation of the pattern, libertarians would see it as morally impermissible since it violates the right of self-ownership26. The pattern element is incompatible with the libertarian ideology and, a fortiori, it is also incompatible with anarchism, in both the individualist and collectivist versions, since the common thread which runs through both of them is that “anarchism is the approach which considers that all forms of human association must be voluntary”27, a formulation which rejects distributive patterns if they are not actually chosen by individuals. Since the same minimalist view of state interventionism is present in both the American strand of conservatism, associated with the Republican Party, who state the following: “we oppose interventionist policies that [...] allow it [the federal government] to pick winners and losers in the marketplace”28 and the biggest conservative Europarty, i.e. the Alliance of European Conservatives and Reformists (spearheaded by the Conservative Party of the U.K.), who state as the first principle of their Prague Declaration: “Free enterprise, free and fair trade and competition, minimal regulation, lower taxation, and small government as the ultimate catalysts for individual freedom and personal and national

24 Ibidem, p. 169. 25 Ibidem, p.172. The other one being the “moral power to acquire property rights in natural

resources and other unowned resources” (Peter Vallentyne, “Left-Libertarianism”, in David Estlund (ed.), Oxford Handbook of Political Philosophy, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2012, p. 152).

26 However, left-libertarians claim that the principle of justice in acquisition needs to have a much stronger interpretation than that given by Nozick to the lockean proviso, i.e. that no individual be made worse-off after the appropriation, and that the appropriation should leave for the rest an equal share per capita or an equal opportunity for well-being with the individual who has performed the appropriation. This would seem to require some compensation which could be constructed as a distributive pattern, but it might be argued, as Risse does (see Mathias Risse, “Does Left-Libertarianism Have Coherent Foundations?”, Politics, Philosophy and Economics, vol. 3, no. 3, 2004, pp. 337-364), that in that case (full) self-ownership is inconsistent with the left-libertarian principle of justice in acquisition. See Peter Vallentyne, Hillel Steiner, Michael Otsuka, “Why Left-Libertarianism Is Not Incoherent, Indeterminate, or Irrelevant: A Reply to Fried”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 33, no. 2, 2005, pp. 201-215 for a reply.

27 See Valentin Quintus Nicolescu, “Anarhismul”, in Mihaela Miroiu (ed.), Ideologii politice...cit., pp. 301-323.

28 http://www.gop.com/our-party/, accessed on 30.12.2013.

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prosperity”29, it could be claimed that conservatism is also incompatible with distributive justice, since it broadly rejects patterned principles of distribution.

THE CURRENCY OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

The other major issue surrounding theories of distributive justice is the currency of the distribution. The currency debate is usually framed in the context of egalitarian justice, so in the following lines I will also adhere to this framework, even though the currency is also relevant to prioritarian and sufficientarian theories. Five currencies are most commonly discussed in the literature30: (1) welfare31, (2) primary goods32, (3) resources33, (4) advantage34

and (5) capabilities35. But in spite of the different interpretations of the equalisandum, all these egalitarian theories as well as the other patterned conceptions of justice described in the previous section adhere to a common core of moral and political equality (without which the various currencies would be inconsistent) based on non-discrimination (formal and informal) on the basis of contingent inequalities such as race, gender, ethnicity, religion, sexual orientation, social and economic status etc. Arneson eloquently makes the case in the following lines:

“Being a member of the human species entitles one to a fundamental equal moral status and dignity, the same for all humans. Ideologies and creeds that deny the fundamental equality of humanity are guilty of prejudice and bigotry. They are beyond the moral pale. For example, sexist views that claim men to be superior to women, racist views that hold that some human groups defined by skin color or lineage are superior to others, and aristocratic doctrines that divide humanity into those naturally fit by quality of birth for membership in a privileged caste or class and those fit for the lower rungs of fixed hierarchies, do not merit serious consideration by reflective minds”36.

29 http://www.aecr.eu/about-us, accessed on 30.12.2013. 30 For an overview see Alex Callinicos, “Equality of What?”, in Colin Farelly (ed.),

Contemporary Political Theory: A Reader, Sage Publications, London, 2004, pp. 36-44. 31 Richard Arneson, “Welfare Should be the Currency of Justice”, Canadian Journal of

Philosophy, vol. 30, no. 4, 2000, pp. 497-524. 32 John Rawls, “Social Unity and Primary Goods” in A. Sen, B. Williams, Utlitarianism and

Beyond, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1982. 33 Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality?...cit”. 34 Gerald Cohen, “On the Currency...cit”. 35 Amartya Sen, “Equality of What?...cit” and Martha Nussbaum, Women and Human

Development: The Capabilities Approach, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2000. See Ingrid Robeyns, “The Capability Approach: A Theoretical Survey”, Journal of Human Development, vol. 6, no. 1, 2005, pp. 103-105) for an outline of the differences between Sen and Nussbaum’s approaches.

36 Richard Arneson, “Equality”, in Robert Simon (ed.), The Blackwell Guide to Social and



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The claim that all people should be morally and politically equal on the

basis of belonging to the human species, regardless of religion, class and race eliminates the possibility that monist ideologies37, such as fascism, national-socialism or religious fundamentalism could encapsulate distributive justice. Although these ideologies can be compatible with some patterned principles (even though they are not actually compatible with the patterned discussed in section 3), the deontic constraints of moral and political equality which are pervasive in theories of distributive justice seems to disqualify them from the range of ideologies which can accommodate distributive justice. Further, it could also be argued that the stance of American conservatism on social issues such as same-sex marriage, abortion, immigration or the place of religion in state affairs is also opposed to the ideal of moral and political equality, favoring the imposition of certain values on minorities or vulnerable groups.

THE PLACE OF RESPONSIBILITY IN DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

Another significant debate which usually also takes place in the context of egalitarianism38 regards the question of whether responsibility should play some constraining role in distributive justice theories or not. More specifically, should it come into play by removing the duties of compensation for morally arbitrary inequalities? The prevalent position is that this is in fact the case. The paradigmatic case for this position is that of Dworkin, who distinguishes between two types of inequalities in outcomes. Those that come about as a result of option luck, which is interpreted as “a matter of how deliberate and

Political Philosophy, Blackwell Publishers, Malden, 2002, pp. 85-105.

37 When referring to monist ideologies in this paper I specifically exclude communism for the following reason: while the communist ideology, in its marxist interpretation, does meet the Andersonian conditions required by a theory of distributive justice (see supra, section 1), in that it specifies a pattern of distribution and a distributive currency (i.e. needs), it is not clear if it actually specifies a theory of justice to begin with. Husami (see Ziyad Husami, “Marx on Distributive Justice”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 8, 1, 1978, pp. 27-64) for instance claims that Marx does indeed offer a moral evaluation of capitalism, but even if this is true, the fact that the communist society is characterized by an abundance of resources and considerations of justice come into play only when there is a conflict regarding the distribution of resources lead to the idea that communism does not appeal to justice (distributive or otherwise), but instead transcends the concept of justice (see Jonathan Wolff, “Karl Marx”, The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (Summer 2011 Edition), Edward N. Zalta (ed.), URL = http://plato.stanford.edu/archives/sum2011/ entries/marx/, 2010).

38 Since it is the dominant pattern prevalent at the moment in distributive justice thinking.

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calculated gambles turn out ‒ whether someone gains or loses through accepting an isolated risk he or she should have anticipated and might have declined“39 and those that come about as a result of brute luck, interpreted as “a matter of how risks fall out that are not in that sense deliberate gambles“40. For instance, if you lose your house at a poker game that is the result of bad option luck, but if an earthquake levels it down it can be said that you have had bad brute luck in that respect. Dworkin then goes on to claim that only inequalities resulting from bad brute luck are subjected to compensation. The inequalities resulting from bad option luck are not subjected to compensation because they are based on people’s preference for a risky way of life and to ignore this preference is to treat people differently when composing the bundles of resources which are to be distributed41. There are authors, however, who challenge the view that responsibility can be deployed through the option luck – brute luck distinction, such as Lippert-Rasmussen42, Vallentyne43, Barry44 or Knight45. However, since at the moment mainstream egalitarian theories seem to agree on giving a significant role to individual responsibility in the establishment of distributive principles, I will consider it plausible in this paper.

What sort of ideologies would be affected in their relation to distributive justice by this fact? First of all, monist ideologies are once again disqualified as incompatible since they do not allow individual choice to

39 Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality?...cit”, p. 293. 40 Ibidem. 41 Ibidem, pp. 294-296. Cohen (see Gerald Cohen, “On the Currency...cit”) and Arneson

(see Richard Arneson, “Equality and Equal Opportunity for Welfare”, Philosophical Studies, vol. 56, no. 1, 1989, pp. 77-93) further develop this view in a different direction than Dworkin, insisting on the full neutralization of brute bad luck (unlike Dworkin who only seeks to partially mitigate it via a hypothetical insurance market). It is essential to note however, that both Cohen and Arneson, whose theories of egalitarian justice constitute the present “mainstream” of luck egalitarianism (Carl Knight, “Distributive Luck”, South African Journal of Philosophy, vol. 31, no. 3, 2012, p. 547), are what Holtug and Lippert-Rasmussen (see Nils Holtug and Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, “An Introduction to Contemporary Egalitarianism”, in Idem (eds.), Egalitarianism: New Essays on the Nature and Value of Equality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2007, p. 20) call “responsibility-agnostic egalitarians”. This means that they agree that the proper concern of egalitarian justice is to mitigate inequalities resulting from bad brute luck, however, they do not take a specific metaphysical position on the problem of free will and maintain the view that if hard determinism is true, luck egalitarianism will always collapse into outcome egalitarianism.

42 Kasper Lippert-Rasmussen, “Egalitarianism, Option Luck, and Responsibility”, Ethics, vol. 111, no. 3, 2001, pp. 548-579.

43 Peter Vallentyne, “Brute Luck, Option Luck, and Equality of Initial Opportunities’, Ethics, vol. 112, no. 3, 2002, pp. 529-557.

44 Nicholas Barry, “Reassessing Luck Egalitarianism”, Journal of Politics, vol. 70, no. 1, 2008, pp. 136-150.

45 Carl Knight, “Distributive Luck...cit”, p. 547.



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constrain the distributive patterns, however unequal they should be. For instance, the distributive pattern under the national-socialist regime with respect to political rights was that some people should have them based on their ethnicity and some people should not based on the same criterion. Individual responsibility played no part in constraining the distributive pattern and no claims based on it could be raised and satisfied under the respective ideology. But aside from these, it might also be the case that socialism too falls under the incompatible categories of ideologies, because of the role played by responsibility. It is a very difficult task to pinpoint exactly what contemporary socialism is, seen as how it appears to be a mixture of mainly social-democratic and communist values (with other influences such as environmentalism and feminism playing their part as well), accentuating on the latter46. The political expression of socialism at a European level, however, seems to be the European Party of the Left, which is an alliance of “socialist, communist, red-green and other democratic left parties”47. The Party Manifesto48 itself, shows a somewhat blurry vision of what socialism is and how it differentiates itself from other policy platforms. However, a distinctly Marxist approach to societal structure appears to emerge. The most relevant aspect for the purpose of this present section is the couching of policies as being driven by (and affecting) social classes, not individuals. This view permeates the Manifesto, nowhere so clear however as in the following phrase: “In the EU various interests are in conflict with each other. For us this creates a new political space for class struggle and for the defence of the interests of workers”49. By framing their ideological conceptions on the idea of social classes rather than individuals, it could be argued that contemporary socialists fall back on the same type of political holism as the basic Marxist theory, which some claim is the “best-known theory” which embodies holism50.

It could therefore be claimed that, by basing their normative conceptions on social wholes instead of individuals, socialists do not intend to take responsibility, which is connected at the most primitive level to the preferences of individuals, into account in their ideological proposals.

46 For a historical distinction between socialism and communism see Valentin Quintus

Nicolescu, “Comunismul”, in Mihaela Miroiu (ed.), Ideologii politice…cit., p. 359. 47 http://www.european-left.org/propos-de-la-ge/documents, accessed on 31.12.2013. 48 http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/politik/publikationen/newsletter/view_html?zid=24811

&bs=1&n=13, accessed on 31.12.2013. 49 http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/politik/publikationen/newsletter/view_html?zid=24811

&bs=1&n=13, accessed on 31.12.2013. 50 Brian Barry, “Does Society Exist? The Case for Socialism”, in Preston King (ed.),

Socialism and the Common Good: New Fabian Essays, Frank Cass & Co., London, 1996, p. 118.

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THE SITE OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

The site of distributive justice “refers to the kinds of objects (individuals’ actions, individuals’ character, rules, or institutions, and so on) appropriately governed by principles of justice, that is, to which the principles of justice rightly apply”51. The on-going debate on the site of distributive justice is much more far-reaching, but one debate carries especially profound ideological implications, i.e. is the family included in the list of institutions which form the site of distributive justice? The site of distributive justice is, in the Rawlsian account, the basic structure of society. According to Rawls, the basic structure is “the way in which the major social institutions distribute fundamental rights and duties and determine the division of advantages from social cooperation”52. Amongst the major social institutions which composes the basic structure Rawls directly mentions: the political constitution, the main social and economic arrangements, “the legal protection of freedom of thought and liberty of conscience, competitive markets, private property in the means of production” and the monogamous family53. Rawls reiterates this position later on, claiming that once again that “the nature of the family”54 belongs to the basic structure and that “the family is part of the basic structure, since one of its main roles is to be the basis of the orderly production and reproduction of society and its culture from one generation to the next”55. However, in spite of his very clear, nominal inclusion of the family in the basic structure, Rawls is confronted by two main lines of criticism: (1) Okin’s56 critique that in effect he still treats family as a moral, not political domain, and consequently does not apply the principles of justice to the family and (2) Cohen’s57 critique that he cannot consistently include the family in the basic structure. The problem which Okin brings to the forefront is that even though Rawls acknowledges that the family is an institution which falls within the domain of the basic structure, seen as how the basic structure “is the primary subject of justice because its effects are so profound and present from the start” and the effects of the family conform to this requirement, he claims a special sort of status for the family, on par with associations and religious institutions,

51 Arash Abizadeh, “Cooperation, Pervasive Impact, and Coercion: On the Scope (not Site) of Distributive Justice”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 35, no. 4, 2007, p. 323.

52 John Rawls, A Theory of Justice, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, 1971, p. 6. 53 Ibidem. 54 John Rawls, Political Liberalism, Columbia University Press, NewYork, 1993, p. 258. 55 Idem, “The Idea of Public Reason Revisited”, University of Chicago Law Review, vol. 64,

no. 3, 1997, p. 787. 56 Susan Moller Okin, “Political Liberalism, Justice, and Gender”, Ethics, vol. 105, no. 1,

1994, pp. 23-43. 57 Gerald Cohen, “Where the Action is: On the Site of Distributive Justice”, Philosophy and

Public Affairs, vol. 26, no. 1, 1997, pp. 3-30.



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as non-political forms of organization58. But since they are non-political, the principles of justice do not directly apply to them, as Rawls himself argues: “The principles of political justice are to apply directly to this structure, but are not to apply directly to the internal life of the many associations within it, the family among them”59. But for Okin this is an obvious problem, as

“by separating out the sphere of the political, to which justice is to apply, from the personal, associational, and familial, within which there is to be great tolerance for many different beliefs and modes of life, he seems to close off the possibility of ensuring that families (and associations) are just”60.

In any case, there seems to be a clear ambiguity in Rawls’s thought,

since on the one hand he includes the family in the basic structure, but on the other hand he claims that it is not political so it should not be directly regulated by the principles of justice. His own attempt to solve this ambiguity is to claim that although the internal structure of the family, just like any other associations which significantly influence the lives of individuals, is not directly regulated by his principles of justice, there are constraints generated by political institutions which bear down on the members of families, qua citizens, and ensure an environment of equality from the standpoint of rights, liberties and opportunities61. Okin focuses her attention especially on Rawls’s equal treatment of families and other associations (universities, churches etc.), claiming that unlike in the latter case, entrance and exit into the family is often not voluntary (at birth and in the case of unwanted divorce) and this is why external constraints are insufficiently adept at bringing justice to the family, which is “perhaps [...] the quintessential place for justice”62. Okin’s position is therefore that Rawls should unambiguously include the family in the basic structure of society and that it should be regulated directly by the principles of justice. Cohen supports Okin’s view about the direct application of justice principles to the family but disagrees with her that the family could be a part of the basic structure. Cohen argues that Rawls stands in the middle of a dilemma by making different claims about what exactly is the nature of the basic structure. Abizadeh identifies three strands of interpretations proposed by Rawls himself, which he subsequently terms theories of the basic

58 Susan Moller Okin, “Political Liberalism...cit”, p. 27. 59 John Rawls, “The Idea...cit”, p. 788. 60 Susan Moller Okin, “Political Liberalism...cit”, pp. 38-39. Furthermore, the direct

regulation of the family through the principles of justice is in Okin’s view demanded by the fact that it plays “an important first role in the formation of citizens' sense of justice” (Ibidem, p. 32), a statement explicitly endorsed by Rawls himself.

61 John Rawls, “The Idea...cit”, pp. 789-790. 62 Susan Moller Okin, “Gender, Justice and Gender: An Unfinished Debate”, Fordham Law

Review, vol. 72, no. 5, 2004, pp. 1564-1566.

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structure: (1) cooperation theory, in which the basic structure is composed of “the institutions that determine and regulate the fundamental terms of social cooperation”, (2) pervasive impact theory, in which the basic structure consists of “the institutions that have profound and pervasive impact upon persons’ life chances” and (3) coercive theory, in which the basic structure is composed only by “the institutions that subject persons to coercion”63. Cohen recognizes this ambiguity, but claims that the only consistent theory of the basic structure is the coercive one, a case in which family cannot belong to the basic structure. The reason is very simple: if we are to allow non-coercive social institutions to belong to the basic structure, we cannot consistently draw the line between their regulation and the regulation of individual choices through principles of justice, since “behavior is constitutive of non-coercive structures”64. So in order for Rawls to include the family in the basic structure, he must open the door to individual choices as well, but if choices are regulated by the principles of justice there is no need for a basic structure as an instrumental tool for applying distributive justice, which will now be applied via a normative ethos in the society. But on the other hand, Rawls cannot consistently exclude family from the site of distributive justice, since it clearly has a profound and pervasive impact on individuals65. Although the discussion on this matter is far from being concluded, the most commonly held views seem to be either that, following Okin, the family should be a site of distributive justice, qua basic structure institution, or, following Cohen, that the family should be a site of distributive justice, on the basis of an existing social ethos. Since, as Rawls recognizes, “some believe that the family itself is the linchpin of gender injustice”66, including the family as a site of distributive justice seems to point towards a close affiliation of distributive justice with feminist ideology in general, and in particular with the ideas associated with the second wave of feminism67. But even if we do not take into account the relation between family and distributive justice, by virtue of considering gender as a morally arbitrary natural contingency generated and by

63 Arash Abizadeh, “Cooperation, Pervasive Impact...cit”, p. 319. 64 Gerald Cohen, “Where the Action is...cit”, p. 20. 65 Ibidem, pp. 17-24. Cohen argues that: “Family structure is fateful for the benefits and

burdens that redound to different people, and, in particular, to people of different sexes, where ‘family structure’ includes the socially constructed expectations which lie on husband and wife. And such expectations are sexist and unjust if, for example, they direct the woman in a family where both spouses work outside the home to carry a greater burden of domestic tasks. Yet such expectations need not be supported by the law for them to possess informal coercive force: sexist family structure is consistent with sex-neutral family law” (Ibidem, p. 22).

66 John Rawls, “The Idea...cit”, pp. 791-792. 67 Mihaela Miroiu, Drumul către autonomie: Teorii politice feministe, Polirom, Iaşi, 2004,

pp. 68-73.



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striving to provide equal rights, liberties and fair equality of opportunity regardless of gender divisions, distributive justice already shows a strong compatibility with the feminist ideology. The extension of the site of distributive justice to the family as well significantly strengthens this compatibility, but is not uniquely constitutive for it.

THE SCOPE OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE The scope of distributive justice “refers to the range of persons who have claims upon and responsibilities to each other arising from considerations of justice”68. A specification of the scope of distributive justice will answer the questions of “what kinds of beings have ‘justicial standing’?” or “to whom is justice owed?”69. There are three distinct issues regarding the scope of justice which have major ideological implications. I will discuss each of these three problems in three separate sub-section, naming them following Vallentyne’s70 distinction of the most radical views on each dimension.

The Presentism/Empirical Possibilism Dimension

The presentism/empirical dimension refers to a larger class of issues which fall under the domain of intergenerational justice71. The question

68 Arash Abizadeh, “Cooperation, Pervasive Impact...cit”, p. 323. 69 Peter Vallentyne, “Distributive...cit”, p. 550. 70 Ibidem, pp. 550-551. 71 Another dimension of intergenerational justice is that of the whole lives view/beings-at-a-

time view. This dimension questions what exactly is “the proper unit of [...] concern” (Larry Temkin, Inequality, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 1993, p. 232) for distributive justice. The whole lives view states that distributive justice should focus on the whole lives of individuals, as opposed to the beings-at-a-time view, which following McKerlie (see Dennis McKerlie, “Equality and Time”, Ethics, 99, 1989, pp. 475-491) can be further split into the simultaneous segments view and the corresponding segments view. The whole lives view is most often adopted by political philosophers, but it is called into question by Temkin (see Larry Temkin, Inequality, cit, pp. 235-238) who shows that it can lead to extremely counter-intuitive results. It is also vulnerable to the critique levied by Kekes (see John Kekes, “A Question for Egalitarians”, Ethics, vol. 107, no. 4, 2004, pp. 658-669) that distributive justice on the whole lives view should prioritize health care for men since on average they have a shorter expected life span than women. Although the discussions on this issue are very interesting and remain largely unexplored, I do not think that either view would ab initio would have significant ideological consequences, since no ideology seems to strictly adhere to any of the above mentioned views. One important application of the distinction concerns restorative justice and it would seem apparent that a form of radical anarchism with unenforceable self-ownership rights might

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addressed here is: do we have a duty of justice to both existing and non-existing individuals or only to the existing ones? At one end of the spectrum we have the presentist view, which states that we have duties of justice only to those who exist at the present time and at the other we have the empirical possibilism view, which states that we have duties of justice to possible future (or past) individuals. Between them lies a somewhat less radical view, termed definitism, which holds that we have duties of justice to future individuals if “given the laws of nature and the circumstances”, they will definitely exist (or have definitely existed)72. On the presentist view, I gather that (at the very least) all pluralist ideologies would concur that duties of justice (not necessarily distributive justice) extend to some (if not even all) of the people existing in the present. If this statement is false, than the respective ideology does not have any theory of justice built into its ideological core. The more interesting question is what sort of ideologies are affiliated with the empirical possibilist73 and definitist views. Let us begin with the former. Duties to mere possible future individuals can be ideologically sought out most easily in party platforms by seeking the sustainable use of resources, sustainable growth and references to the well-being of future generations. Following the same pattern of appealing to the documents stating fundamental principles of Europarties, I find that it is compatible with environmentalism (in the 2009 Manifesto of the European Green Party74), with social democracy (in the Declaration of principles75), with American liberalism76, with Christian-democracy (in the 2012 EPP Party Platform77), with European liberalism (in the 2009-2014 ALDE Strategic Programme78) and socialism (in the Manifesto of the Party of the European Left79). The divide actually seems to closely resemble that in section 2, where I

not call for restorative justice, demanded by the whole lives view, but aside from that, no other ideologies would seem problematic from this standpoint. For instance, any sort of reasonably constructed libertarianism would either prevent (via natural law) or rectify the injustices occuring in the first phase.

72 Ibidem, p. 550 73 Especially since empirical possibilist views suffer from what is called the non-identity

problem (see Derek Parfit, “Future Generations: Further Problems”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 11, no. 2, 1982, pp. 113-172).

74 http://europeangreens.eu/sites/europeangreens.eu/files/2009%20Manifesto.pdf, accessed on 02.01.2014.

75 http://www.pes.eu/sites/www.pes.org/files/declaration_of_principles_web_en_0.pdf,ac cessed on 02.01.2014.

76 http://www.democrats.org/issues/environment, accessed on 02.01.2014. 77 http://www.epp.eu/sites/default/files/content/EN%20with%20cover.pdf, accessed on

02.01.2014. 78 http://www.alde.eu/fileadmin/docs/home/documents/FINAL%20STRATEGIC%20PRO

GRAMME_web.pdf, accessed on 02.01.2014. 79 http://archiv2007.sozialisten.de/politik/publikationen/newsletter/view_html?zid=24811&



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discussed the patterning element of a theory of distributive justice. While libertarianism, conservatism and anarchism do not necessarily (for consistency purposes) reject the view that justice is owed to future possible individuals, they do not usually associate themselves with it either. At least two counter-examples however can be given, both regarding libertarianism. On the one hand, some libertarians can be free-market environmentalists, who claim that the preservation of resources can be best provided by following a libertarian political system. Since property rights are well-defined in a libertarian system, privatization of all resources might be required, they argue, for escaping common-pool resources dilemmas80 and preserving resources for future generations. Steiner and Vallentyne81 however, argue that no right-libertarian theory and no joint-ownership libertarian theory would plausibly capture considerations of intergenerational justice and that only a left-libertarian theory, which constrains both the appropriation and use of resources will take such considerations into account. The definist view might bring another interesting consideration into the picture. First of all, ideologies which defend the empirical possibilist view will, a fortiori, also defend the definist view. But while libertarian and anarchist theories do not seem to bring anything new to the table, conservatism, with its stance on abortion seems to claim that we have duties of justice to people who have not yet entered into existence, but will do so with certainty (or at least to a very large degree). Granted, the interpretation of justice may not be consistent with distributive justice from a specific standpoint (it may violate the equal distribution of rights to men and women or might violate the choice condition), but considerations of justice do come into play for conservatives when moving from the mere possible future individuals to definitive individuals.

The Rational Agents/Sentient Beings Dimension

This dimension refers to the mental attributes required for agents to be considered to fall within the scope of distributive justice. As Vallentyne contends, “as a substantive matter, it is relatively uncontroversial that contemporary, productive, rational agents of one’s society have some kind of

bs=1&n=13, accessed on 02.01.2014.

80 See Elinor Ostrom, Governing the Commons. The Evolution of Institutions for Collective Action, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1990, pp. 12-13.

81 Hillel Steiner, Peter Vallentyne, “Libertarian Theories of Intergenerational Justice”, in Axel Gosseries, Lukas Meyer (eds.), Justice Between Generations, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2009, pp. 50-76.

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rights against one”82. The question raised is whether we also have duties which extend beyond rational agents, i.e. to children, mentally disabled individuals and sentient non-human beings such as animals. For the first two categories, the problem is relatively uncontroversial, since most ideologies do not appeal to autonomy in their considerations of justice but to the intrinsically valuable status of existing as a human being. Although the exact specification of the rights which children and the mentally disabled individuals have ranges between ideologies ‒ for instance, since it is egalitarian derived, social democracy would plausibly argue in favor of subsidizing at least access to primary education for all children, while libertarians would normally not adopt the same position83 ‒, at least some general duty is owed to each of them in every ideology, even if it is only a very limited right to life and subsistence. The question of sentient non-human beings may be somewhat more difficult to tackle however and, from the standpoint of its ideological effects, seems to be very close to the distinction in the previous section. Most ideologies would accept the idea that there are some moral duties owed to animals, even though, aside from the environmentalist ideology (mainly deep ecology), perhaps not as strong as to non-autonomous human beings and not as strong as those claimed by Singer84 or Regan85. The duty to minimize their pain when killed or the duties concerning prohibition of hunting endangered species would fall in a category of policies compatible with most ideologies. It might be the case however that libertarianism, since it is based on the autonomy of beings, would not impose any duties owed to animals. Vallentyne does not agree with this view and suggests an alternative, i.e. the possibility to consider animals as being full self-owners, with the rights involved being understood as protecting their interests rather than their choices86. However, he recognizes the absurdity of this possibility and rejects it, since animals such as rats would then be protected by rights of self-ownership on par with humans. Free-market environmentalists however will claim that in many cases, just as preservation of resources can be more adequately achieved by privatization, so would preservation of species. Schmidtz87 for instance, offers precisely this sort of argument when defending

82 Peter Vallentyne, “Distributive...cit”, p. 550. I will assume that only non-monist

ideologies are relevant here. It might be the case that under national-socialism for instance Vallentyne’s statement is false.

83 This is not to be understood as though libertarians would claim that there are no duties addressed to children, which is a false position (see Morris Lipson, Peter Vallentyne, “Libertarianism, Autonomy, and Children”, Public Affairs Quarterly, vol. 5, no. 4, 1991, pp. 333-352).

84 Peter Singer, Animal Liberation, Harper Collins Publishers, New York, 1975. 85 Tom Regan, The Case for Animal Rights, University of California Press, Berkeley, 1983. 86 Peter Vallentyne, “Libertarianism...cit”. 87 David Schmidtz, Persons, Polis, Planet: Essays in Applied Philosophy, Oxford University

Press, Oxford, 2008, pp. 228-238.



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libertarian preservation policies of elephants in Botswana and Zimbabwe. There are, therefore, some consequentialist interpretations of libertarianism which are compatible with the extended view of the scope of distributive justice, but, no fully fledged libertarian deontological theory defending the rights of animals exists88.

The Statism/Cosmopolitanism Dimension

This dimension refers to the range of agents89 to which justice applies, from the point of view of the existence of an underlying requirement of sharing some common political background between agents. The question raised here is: do we have moral duties to agents with whom we do not share a common political framework? In turn, this question is further developed into: is justice national or international in scope? Most of the literature on global distributive justice is heavily influenced by Rawlsian theory and both answers to the question often claim to be derived from the ideas of Rawls’s theory of justice as fairness. Pogge90 is one of the main proponents of the position that justice is global in scope, building this view on the fact that: (1) the international system is characterized by a high-level of political and economic interdependency (which is a pre-requisite for the application of justice as fairness) and (2) there are severe inequalities at a global level which need rectification, such as the fact that (2.1) citizens of different nations have unequal chances to influence the transnational political decisions, (2.2) equally talented and motivated individuals do not possess equal chances to obtain public goods, services and positions, regardless of their nation of origin and (2.3) social and economic inequalities are not used in the benefit of the world’s worst off positions91. These concerns are all shared by Rawls in his theory of justice as fairness, but only within the society itself. Pogge’s solution to the problems raised is to propose a “global resource dividend”, that could be interpreted as a type of difference principle and may be successfully defended by an egalitarian conception of international justice. The dividend demands that people should pay a proportional tax on the resources they extract from the territory within its national borders, whether they use it themselves or export it92.

88 Peter Vallentyne, “Libertarianism...cit”. 89 For simplicity I will assume that they are rational human beings, in order to avoid the

complications discussed in the previous sub-section. 90 Thomas Pogge, “An Egalitarian Law of the Peoples”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 23,

no. 3, 1994, pp. 195-224. 91 Ibidem, p. 196. 92 Ibidem, p. 199.

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But Rawls himself is actually opposed to the idea that distributive justice is global in scope. He claims that “the principles of justice for the basic structure of society are not suitable as fully general principles. They do not apply to all subjects […] or to the law of the peoples”93. In nuce, the argument is synthesized by Abizadeh as follows: (1) the primary subject of justice is society’s basic structure, (2) a basic structure global in scope does not exist. From (1) and (2) we obtain: (3) the scope of justice is not global94. Rawls maintains that there are duties which we owe to international agents, such as the duty to respect the freedom and independence of other peoples, the duty of non-intervention, the duty to observe treaties, the duty to honor human rights etc95, but these duties are weaker than those required for the construction of a theory of distributive justice.

The debate on the problem of the national/global scope of distributive justice is on-going, and, unlike most of the discussions present in the other sections of this paper, there appears to be no convergence to a consensual position at the moment. Both positions carry ideological implications. If distributive justice is national in scope, cosmopolitanism is clearly rejected. If distributive justice is global in scope, then economically protectionist policies96, opposition to foreign aid and anti-immigrationist policies97 cannot be ethically

93 John Rawls, “The Law of the Peoples”, Critical Inquiry, vol. 20, no. 1, 1993, p. 39. Rawls

is therefore consistent with his theory of justice as fairness by adhering to a political conception of justice at an international level as well. This view is defined in relation to the possibility of owing international duties by Nagel: “Every state has the boundaries and population it has for all sorts of accidental and historical reasons; but given that it exercises sovereign power over its citizens and in their name, those citizens have a duty of justice toward one another through the legal, social, and economic institutions that sovereign power makes possible. This duty is sui generis, and is not owed to everyone in the world, nor is it an indirect consequence of any other duty that may be owed to everyone in the world, such as a duty of humanity. Justice is something we owe through our shared institutions only to those with whom we stand in a strong political relation. It is, in the standard terminology, an associative obligation” (Thomas Nagel, “The Problem of Global Justice”, Philosophy and Public Affairs, vol. 33, no. 2, 2005, p. 121).

94 Arash Abizadeh, “Cooperation, Pervasive Impact...cit”, p. 322. Abizadeh himself considers that this view is mistaken and that proponents of this position wrongly equate the scope of justice with the site of justice (Ibidem, pp. 323-324).

95 John Rawls, “The Law...cit”, p. 46. 96 See Radu Dudău, “Globalizarea şi globalismul”, in Mihaela Miroiu (ed.), Ideologii

politice…cit., p. 250). 97 Although on many occassions at the level of political theory dichotomies on various

issues are acceptable (and I think this is the case with nationally/globally owed duties) at the level of policy formulation, most times, dichotomous distinctions cannot be fruitfuly used and must be replaced with positions on a continuum. The immigration problem is a relevant example. At one side we can place strict prohibitions on immigration, which might approach (but perhaps not perfectly overlap) the immigration policy of North Korea. At the other side we would have a position where individuals can immigrate without any sort of constraints imposed, even some very non-invasive procedure such as



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justified. Ideologies promoting the latter sorts of policies, such as monist ideologies and conservatism98 are therefore incompatible with distributive justice, in the cosmopolitan view, since they are, at most, based on a political conception of justice. It might be claimed that by rejecting foreign aid, libertarianism should also be excluded as having a purely national scope, but I think that this view is mistaken since in this case the rejection is not based on a political conception of justice, but on a different specification of what sorts of duties are owed to individuals.

ON THE PROXIMAL IDEOLOGICAL AFFILIATION OF DISTRIBUTIVE JUSTICE

In this section I move from the purpose undertaken in sections 2-6, which was to show incompatibilities between various core principles of ideologies and specifications of the constitutive elements of distributive justice, and attempt to sketch a thin outline of the relation between social-democracy and distributive justice, showing that the latter is required by the former.

The basic ideological content of social democracy99 can be said to have sprung mainly from two different strands of thought, i.e. socialism and liberalism, but at present social-democracy is not reducible to either of them. Further, like all ideologies, social democracy has known a significant amount of alterations throughout its history100. Some of these alterations, like the Third Way version of social democracy supported by Tony Blair, Gerhard Schroder or Jose Socrates were so highly significant in shaping modern day social democracy, that a recourse to prior versions becomes less relevant in the scholarly debate.

As mentioned in the first section, when discussing social-democracy I will primarily refer to the platform of the Party of European Socialists, and,

an ID check at the border. Almost all policies which are ideologically prescribed fall somewhere between the two extremes and our task is to show with approximation where they are situated on this continuum, in relation to the other ideologies and to the extremities of the continuum. By claiming that the conservatives support anti-immigrationist policies I do not therefore mean that they do not allow for any sort of immigration, just as I do not mean that more lenient policies, such as the social democratic ones, do not impose any sorts of constraints on potential immigrants.

98 See http://www.gop.com/2012-republican-platform_Reforming/#Item11, 17.02.2014 for American conservatism and Principle 7 of the Prague Declaration for European conservatism.

99 Throughout this paper I consider that left-wing liberalism (in the tradition of the Democratic Party in the U.S.) and social democracy in the tradition of social democratic parties in Europe (grouped in the Party of European Socialists) are equivalent. While differences between them may naturally exist, as is the case even within the PES family, the ideological core is sufficiently similar to permit this approximation.

100 See Alice Iancu, “Social-democrația” in Mihaela Miroiu (ed.), Ideologii politice...cit., pp. 70-104.

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more specifically to their PES Declaration of principles101 adopted on the 24th of November 2011102. This procedure has two advantages: (1) the Declaration conveys the basic principles of contemporary social democracy thought at the European level, (2) the Declaration is supported by a group which contains every major social democratic party in Europe, so it is as close as possible to being action-guiding. The most relevant part of the Declaration for the present purposes is principle 8. This principle is formulated as follows:

“A strong and just society is one that instills confidence and inspires trust.

To guarantee this trust and confidence, we must ensure that the wealth generated by all is shared fairly. This collective responsibility embodies our conviction that we are stronger when we work together. It also reflects our determination to enable all people to live a dignified life, free of poverty. All members of society are entitled to protection from social risks in life”103.

The second sentence of the principle is particularly significant, since it

clearly makes the case for distributive justice, with wealth as the unit of distribution104 105. The underlying idea of the formulation of that sentence seems to be very similar to that of Rawls in relation to the understanding of society as “a cooperative venture for mutual advantage”106. The problem raised both in the Rawlsian conception and the social democratic principle is therefore how to arrange inequalities generated by the surplus of wealth created through the cooperation of individuals in a society and, in both cases, the response is that it should be distributed fairly107. Of course, it is not clear if the conception of fairness in the Declaration is further decomposed into a maximal scheme of basic liberties, fair equality of opportunity and difference principle as in Rawls’ theory108 or if fairness is understood as “requiring that individuals get what they are due”109 or something altogether different, but regardless of its particular interpretation, fairness can be considered to represent a patterned principle of

101 Henceforth Declaration. 102 http://www.pes.eu/sites/www.pes.org/files/declaration_of_principles_web_en_0.pdf,

accessed on 29.12.2013. 103 http://www.pes.eu/sites/www.pes.org/files/declaration_of_principles_web_en_0.pdf,

accessed on 29.12.2013. 104 This can in turn be compatible with the resourcist interpretation, the primary goods

interpretation, the welfare interpretation or the capabilities interpretation of the currency of social justice, depending on the actual policies designed to implement this principle.

105 A potential candidate for the currency of distributive justice, i.e. well-being, also appears in principle 5 of the Declaration.

106 John Rawls, A Theory...cit, p. 4. 107 The idea of fairness is also deeply embedded in the 2012 Democratic Party Platform,

where the term “fair” appears approximately 30 times in various contexts, most often related to the idea of citizens paying their fair shares in society, fair markets and competitions and fairness in the distribution of opportunities.

108 Ibidem, p. 53. 109 Peter Vallentyne, “Distributive...cit”, p. 548.



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distributive justice. The last two sentences of principle 8 also point to distributive justice. The enabling of all people to live a dignified life which avoids poverty and a requirement that all people have access to decent work (Principle 4) constitute other core ideas of distributive justice, which seem to be most compatible with the sufficientarian view110. Also, the claim that all members are entitled to protection from social risks seems to be undergirded by the same intuition which we can find in Rawls111 and Dworkin112, i.e. that the effects of bad luck in the assignment of socio-economic positions are morally arbitrary and must be neutralized. Thus, it also calls for the same type of redistribution from those who benefited from the effects of this type of luck to those who were negatively affected.

Principles 9 and 10 of the Declaration, which call for gender equality and equal access to rights, education, culture and public services for all, regardless of sex, racial or ethnic origin, religion or belief, disability, sexual orientation, gender identity or age are also in line with major egalitarian justice theories such as those of Rawls, Dworkin, Cohen or Arneson which all call for fair equality of opportunity113. Principles 7 and 12, which call for solidarity between generations and international solidarity are also embedded in certain conceptions of distributive justice, which call for a broad distribution of advantages, as shown in section 6.

Thus, if we agree that the idea of a society where individuals have valid moral claims to a fair-share of the resources produced and distributed is fundamental for social-democracy, as the PES Declaration of principles seems to suggest, then we might consider the concept of distributive justice as being not only compatible, but in fact constitutive for social democracy.

CONCLUSIONS In this paper I have sought to broadly discuss the compatibility between contemporary political ideologies and various perspectives concerning distributive justice. Following my analysis, I conclude that social democracy (or left-wing liberalism, associated with the Democratic Party in the US) is the ideology which reflects considerations of distributive justice most faithfully, being compatible with all the elements of a distributive justice theory and even explicitly requiring them as part of its ideological core. I also show that other ideologies, such as feminism, environmentalism and cosmopolitanism are fully compatible with some, but not all, interpretations

110 See Harry Frankfurt, “Equality...cit”, pp. 33-34. 111 John Rawls, A Theory...cit. 112 Ronald Dworkin, “What is Equality?...cit”. 113 See John Christman, Social and Political Philosophy: A Contemporary Introduction,

Routledge, London, 2002, p. 80 for a distinction between equality of opportunity and equality of outcome.

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of distributive justice and further, they require principles of distributive justice in the cases where they are fully compatible. Further, I show that right-libertarianism is rejected by the pattern element, and on most interpretations it is incompatible with some definitions of the scope of distributive justice, such as definitivism and empirical possibilism and the sentient beings view. The same is true for anarchism. I also show that conservatism is rejected by the pattern element, by the currency element114, by empirical possibilism, by the sentient beings view and by some implications of cosmopolitanism. Further, I claim that monist ideologies are rejected by the currency element, the responsibility condition and the cosmopolitanism view and by all of the reasonable interpretations of the rational agents/sentient beings debate.

While Christian-democracy and European liberalism are not necessarily found to be incompatible following the analysis of each particular element, they do not take into account any principle of distributive justice in their ideological platforms and do not demand such a principle. Therefore, the conclusion that social democracy is the only comprehensive ideology which reflects fully developed considerations of distributive justice seems warranted. Still, it is necessary to mention both that: (1) Christian-democracy and European liberalism could theoretically incorporate some principles of distributive justice (extending beyond the basic distribution of rights and duties), but do not appear to do so in their mainstream contemporary interpretations and (2) some ideologies, which are narrower in scope, i.e. feminism, environmentalism and cosmopolitanism are also compatible with certain interpretations of distributive justice and require the incorporation of such considerations into their ideological core, so I do consider that distributive justice is not ideologically monopolized by social democracy.

As a final note, I underline once again the fact that the conclusions of this paper should be treated with caution, since they follow an analysis which aims to be as comprehensive as possible in the inclusion of ideologies and elements of distributive justice, on pain of a more in-depth exploration of only one of these elements on various ideologies, or alternatively, on the relation between one ideology and the various operationalizations of distributive justice elements. These tasks will unfortunately have to be postponed for other works. However, the results obtained from the sort of broad theoretical inquiry employed here can be used as stepping stones for further contributions in the directions outlined above and are at the same time valuable since they provide a full (albeit imperfect) picture of the range of issues which can be discussed when trying to link ideologies to distributive justice principles.

114 In the Republican version.

RECENSIONES

EKATERINA KALININA Mediated Post-Soviet Nostalgia Sodertorns Högskola, Stockholm, 2014, 271 pp. Ekaterina Kalinina’s book, Mediated Post-Soviet Nostalgia, is probably the best example out there of what the combined and interwoven fields of cultural and media studies – as the two are currently practiced in much of Western academia – can bring to the understanding of political culture and political change in post-communist societies, and in particular the political culture and the political change that occurred in the Russian post-communist society. The book, a standard PhD thesis at base, is divided into two broad parts: the first consists of theoretical considerations drawn from a multi- and inter-disciplinary literature binned together into a framework for analyzing the phenomenon of Soviet nostalgia, while the second consists of an collection of empirical case studies, reflecting the different “mediating arenas” of Soviet nostalgia, which range from restaurant decorum, museum exhibitions and theater plays to fashion wear, TV series and Russian social networking websites. Three basic research questions guide this investigation: 1) How is the Soviet past represented in different mediating arenas of Post-Soviet nostalgia?; 2) Have the mediated representations of the Soviet past changed during the past twenty years?; and 3) How is nostalgia defined and which types of nostalgia can be identified in connection with different actors and mediating arenas? Of particular note are the novel sources used in the book’s documentation: besides ethnographic notes and open interviews with TV produces, media directors, fashion designers and journalists, a lot of the material studied is drawn from video and DVD recordings, online photo and journal archives, various websites and even forum comments. It must be stressed, from the outset, that the author is not actually concerned with analyzing the post-communist Russian political culture, as the concept was introduced and defined in the systemic tradition of political science by Sidney Verba and Gabriel Almond in their groundbreaking – but not very seminal – 1963 book, The Civic Culture. Writing from a cultural studies perspective, Ekaterina Kalinina’s approach is eminently “bottom-up”, sociological and anthropological in nature and scope, not “top-down”, political, systemic or based on public opinion surveys amenable to quantitative analysis. She is also more interested in what the influential cultural theorist Herbert J. Gans has termed as low or popular culture as opposed to the high or elite culture and she doesn’t have an input-output model of the kind sketch in a structural-functionalist approach in which to fit her qualitative results and

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therefore analyze the overall dynamic of the political system. Nevertheless, the book is exceptionally relevant to understanding a defining aspect of contemporary Russian political culture broadly conceived, as it manages to illuminate convincingly how the increased nostalgic mediation of the Soviet past after the year 2000, thus coinciding with the presidencies of Vladmir Putin and Dimitry Medvedev, has led to the increasingly revanchist, nationalist and imperialist foreign policy of Russia today. As she writes in the “Introduction”: “…mediation of the Soviet past emerged simultaneously with heated debates about the historical portrayal and reevaluation of the Soviet period and its legacy, the cultivation of official commemorations of the Great Patriotic War of 1941-1945, and the role of Josef Stalin in the country’s history.” (p. 17). Ekaterina Kalinina’s theoretical starting point in analyzing the role of Soviet nostalgia in Russian society is, predictably for a cultural theorist, the “father” of the contemporary field of cultural studies, Raymond Williams, and his concept of structure of feeling, by which it is meant a common set of values and perceptions of particular generations sharing a particular space and time: the Zeitgeist or the spirit of the times. She then proceeds in a very constructivist manner to relate the concept of nostalgia – skillfully analyzed in the footsteps of Reinhart Koselleck’s history of concepts (Begriffsgeschichte) and then understood for the present purposes mainly as a strategy of coping with a traumatic past, which in the case of present day Russia is not the Soviet period but actually the transition period of the 1990s under Boris Yeltsin – with the theories of historical memory of M. Halbwachs, J. Assman and Paul Ricoeur; the notion of strategic uses of the past elaborated by Swedish historian Peter Aronsson; the theories of national identity of Ernest Gellner, Eric Hobsbawn and especially Benedict Anderson; and, finally, with the broad theories of mediation, understood in the vein of Marshall McLuhan (who is not actually quoted in the book) “as a process of constructing meaning through communication by various media” during the present post-Soviet period, social representation and Stuart Hall’s encoding/decoding model of culture. Culture thus conceived as a social practice is best grasped methodologically through Geertzian think descriptions and hermeneutical reception history (Wirkungsgeschichte) which make up the corpus of the book. In 167 pages, Ekaterina Kalinina takes us into a fascinating trip through some of the most important lieux de mémoire of Soviet nostalgia in contemporary Russia: dinner at the Petrovich restaurant in Moscow, opened in 1996 and featuring red curtains, a Lenin bust, old-fashion furniture, waiters and waitresses in pioneer uniforms and food made strictly according to recipies from the Soviet-era Book of Tasty and Healthy Food; a visit to private and public museums of Soviet life and USSR in Moscow, Kazan and Novosibirsk full of Communist propaganda items as well as the project for a future National Museum of the USSR to be opened in Ulyanovsk, the birthplace of Vladimir

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Lenin; an evening out at the Nikitski Gates Moscow theater to see the plays Songs of our courtyards and Songs of our communal flat directed by Mark Rozovski or an evening at home, watching an episode of the TV musical The old songs about what matters, the TV show-turned book Namedni: 1961-1991: Nasha Era, the documentaries Our pride and Legendi SSR and – since 2004 – all the reruns and theme programs of the appropriately named Nostal’giia channel, which broadcasts in all former Soviet states; going shopping for a Denis Simachev or Antonina Shapovalova fashion brand dress or shirt inspired by Soviet-era uniforms and slogans and then hang out with the jolly “hipster” crowd of the Nashi Youth Movement created in 2005 to ward-off an Ukrainian-style “fascist” Orange Revolution in Russia; or, if you’re tired, just stay home and browse the online archive Nostal’giia Pro and the Encyclopedia of our childhood, while talking to your friends – in fact comrades! – on Vkontacte using the new Soviet-style interface! The book’s conclusions – after interpretatively analyzing such a broad material of everyday, popular cultural objects, contents, production and reception sites – support the idea that with the arrival of Vladimir Putin in power there has been a dramatic change in the structure of feeling of the Russian society towards a Soviet nostalgic mode, which neatly corresponds to what political scientists would describe as a significant change in the political system in general and in the political culture in particular, although some early signs of this nostalgic, authoritarian and anti-liberal turn in popular attitudes were already noticeable after the 1995 victory of the Communist Party in the Russian parliamentary elections. Using a distinction made by Svetlana Boym, Ekaterina Kalinina describes this change in the structure of feeling of the Russian society after 2000 as a switch from a mode of reflective nostalgia to a mode of restorative nostalgia: “The reflective and critical attitude to the Soviet past which was characteristic of the “last Soviet generation” first gave way to a commercial exploitation of the past by the “last children of the Soviet Union”, and then political forces took on board the glorious moments of the Soviet period, involving people who were born after the Soviet Union had collapsed” (pp. 231-232).

Viewed in the comparative terms that she provides in the first part of her study, we can pretty confidently assert that the Russian form of nostalgia for the Soviet past – although in its initial phase it shares with the East-German Ostalgie an interest in communist-era material objects and may also have represented a form of counter-memory, as in the case of Romania according to Diana Georgescu – actually represents something very different from a consumer-driven protest against the difficult adjustment to a market-based society (a trait that actually has a lot in common with the postmodern forms of ironic nostalgia that can be detected in the recurrent “retro” styles of long-standing capitalist and democratic societies) or a hidden critical discourse

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against the post-communist master-narrative, resembling more the political and ahistorical strand of revisionist Yugo-nostalgia as identified by Zala Volčič.

Although Mediated Post-Soviet Nostalgia is a very timely and very informative contribution to post-communist studies from the angle of cultural studies, understanding the restorative politics in the making of Vladimir Putin requires a much broader cultural perspective which should take into account not only the political uses of the Soviet past, but also the many political uses of the more distant, yet equally if not more present, Imperial Czarist past. The political uses of the Imperial past in contemporary Russia are many and various, ranging from a symbolic appropriation of Czarist court grandeur and a revival of state-led Orthodox militantism to a resurgence of Pan-Slavic messianic ethno-nationalist discourse and a kitsch indulgence with lavish 18th century style aristocratic mansions among the Kremlin-connected oligarchs. It is precisely this cultural syncretism between the Soviet and the Czarist past – no matter how conflicting or problematic the two may seems for an outside observer – that best captures the predominant political culture of present-day Russia.

BOGDAN C. ENACHE

CRISTIAN VASILE Viața intelectuală și artistică în primul deceniu al regimului Ceaușescu 1965-1974 with a preface by VLADIMIR TISMĂNEANU Humanitas, București, 2014, 282 pp.

After carefully studying, in his two previous books, the manner in which communist rulers dealt with the cultural sphere during the Gheorghiu-Dej epoch, Cristian Vasile now turns his attention to the first decade of the reign of Nicolae Ceaușescu. After a brief review of the existing literature on the subject, Vasile then proceeds to analyze the manner in which Ceaușescu’s regime handled its own cultural projects and its reactions to those resisting its control. Divided into five chapters, the volume addresses the establishment of museums and the construction of monuments (chapter I), the evolution of amateur theatre and music groups (chapter II), theatre (chapter III), literature (chapter IV) and the educational system (chapter V). By way of concluding remarks, the main points of the books are summed up and comparisons are made with the situation in other states from the Eastern Bloc such as Bulgaria and the GDR.

Although the subject has been intensively studied, Cristian Vasile’s volume is a welcomed addition to the existing literature on communist

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Romania, in so far as the author examines domains previously ignored, corrects longstanding misconceptions and opens up new areas of research. Archival research is successfully combined with analysis of legislation, magazines from that period, memoirs and collections of interviews with former communist officials. By considering government headed cultural and artistic projects from a variety of texts, Vasile is able to sketch a clear picture of the implementation of Party orders.

Politicians often point out that Romania has come to terms with its communist past and is now a civilized country, complete with a fully Western-style democracy. At the beginning of this study, Vasile mentions the fact that he couldn’t consult certain archives because he was denied access to them by two Ministries (Culture and Education). This demonstrates that we are far from truly overcoming communism’s legacy, and certain aspects of it are yet to be researched. For any such future study, Cristian Vasile’s work remains an exemplary model for its clever use of available archival resources and secondary literature.

Aside from this, probably the volume’s main contribution is the reconsideration of the seventies. The author sets out and successfully accomplishes to reconstruct the political situation of the seventies. Vasile moves the point of interest from 1971 to 1974, the year in which the Constitution was modified, Ceaușescu became president and the laws that put an end to the Romanian Thaw of the sixties were implemented (pp. 157-163). The author also demonstrates that the changes adopted were not caused by Ceaușescu’s Asian tour of 1971 as previously suggested1, but were merely a consequence of previous developments (p. 30). Despite the fact that other historians have speculated on this point2, it is Vasile’s merit that he finally settles the question of the origins of the neo-Stalinist politics of the seventies.

Vasile, however, still relies on the phrase “Cultural Revolution” in order to describe the transformations brought on by the seventies. I believe that the use of this term is unfounded, as the situation in China can by no means be compared to that in Romania. The Maoist Cultural Revolution was characterized by mobilization of the masses3, widespread social violence4, and cultural iconoclasm5, features that one cannot identify in Romania.

1 Monica Lovinescu, Unde scurte: Pragul, Humanitas, București, 1995, p. 186; Adrian

Cioroianu, Ce Ceauşescu qui hante les Roumains: Le mythe, les représentation et le culte du Dirigeant dans la Roumanie communiste, Curtea Veche, București, 2005, pp. 74-77.

2 See Florin Constantiniu, De la Răutu şi Roller la Muşat şi Ardeleanu, Editura Enciclopedică, București, 2007, pp. 336-341.

3 If in China the political enthusiasm of the youth, materialized in the format of the Red Guards, was used to bring down Mao’s political enemies, and subsequently put down when it got out of hand, in Romania, as Cristian Vasile shows, mass movements such as “Cântarea României” were designed to prevent the formation of student radicalism.

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The Chinese Cultural Revolution was meant to eradicate the „four olds” of the bourgeoisie and exploiting classes: old habits, old traditions, old ideas and old culture. Only by doing this was a new culture able to develop6. Or, as Vasile demonstrates, in Romania communist rulers used traditions in order to win the population’s trust. While certain customs were denounced as “mystical”, at no moment was there an intention to annihilate them in order to bring about revolutionary change.

An important drawback of the work is it’s traditional portrayal of the relationship between intellectuals and communist officials as compared to its overall revisionist stance. Vasile is not interested in the variety of responses to communist projects, or the discussions regarding official legislation. When discussing the construction of museums or setting up of plays, he is eager to show that the Party approved decisions were the ones that were imposed. One could easily amend the title with the formula: “according to the R.C.P’s directives”. Even if the Party line was the one that always prevailed, it does not mean one should not hear the other side of the story. A better knowledge of the way in which intellectuals reacted to the Party’s orders would definitely improve our understanding of the difference between resistance and dissidence during the Ceaușescu years7. Even though he proves capable of doing social history (p. 73), the author prefers to concentrate on Party officials. From this point of view, Katherine Verdery’s “National Ideology under Socialism: Identity and Cultural Politics in Ceausescu’s Romania” provides a much richer, nuanced picture of the interaction between the two sides.

Verdery’s volume is brought up by Vasile at the beginning of his study and rightly criticized for wrongly attributing to intellectuals the implementation

4 Traditions in which class struggle was portrayed were disavowed in communist Romania. For example, the evening village dance (“hora”) was banned in Transylvania during the fifties. When communist officials allowed it to be performed again a decade later, they emphasized that it would have to renounce its social character: it was no longer to represent a competition between neighbors, clans or families, but a rather a contest in which the best dancers won. Claude Karnoouh, Românii: tipologie şi mentalităţi, Romanian transl. by Carmen Stoean, Humanitas, București, 1994, pp. 251-252.

5 While the Chinese Cultural Revolution had a decisively anti-intellectual character, one can hardly claim that there was a constant persecution of intellectuals in communist Romania during the Ceauşescu years. Protochronism, the official cultural policy of the regime during its last two decades, was established by Edgar Papu, a political prisoner who was educated during the interwar years. While it may or not have originated in party circles, protochronism was definitely encouraged by a considerable number of intellectuals.

6 Maurizio Marinelli, “Cultural Revolution in China”, in Robert Service, Silvio Pons (eds.), A Dictionary of 20th century Communism, Princeton University Press, Princeton & New Jersey, 2012, pp. 252-253.

7 All the more considering that critiques raised in such discussions were fairly radical. See for example, in regards to urban planning, Henri H. Stahl, Organizarea administrativ-teritorială. Comentarii sociologice. Editura Științifică, București, 1969, p. 67, pp. 87-89.

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of a nationalist agenda to the communist government, when in fact things happened the other way around (p. 20-21). He mentions that her study was also invalidated “from other points of view”, however, without ever returning to the subject in order to specify his objections (similar potshots are also taken at G. M. Tamás and Claude Karnoouh). Vasile is right to point out that Verdery was wrong in her analysis of the origins of nationalism, but by doing this he fails to grasp the true value of her analysis. Verdery herself has pointed out when discussing causation that this is not her primary point of interest. Thus, in the introduction to her study on the meaning of corpses in post 1989 Eastern and Central Europe she warned her readers that:

“Those of you who hope for a single answer to these questions or a single explanation encompassing the varied instances will leave this book unsatisfied. To begin with, anthropologists are not good at producing that kind of account; we have too lively an awareness of cultural variation and of what Gillian Feeley-Harnik calls ‘life’s abiding murkiness’. Occam’s razor is not our favorite truth instrument, for it shaves off all the interesting particulars”8.

The crux of Verdery’s analysis of culture under Romanian communism consisted of demonstrating that the manner in which intellectuals approached the subject of the nation, by way of adhering to protochronism or opposing it, was motivated by material gains, as the side that managed to convince those in power that theirs was the right interpretation of nationalism benefited from the government’s financial support9. This functionalist analysis upset many when the Romanian translation of “National Ideology...” was published at the beginning of the nineties10, in a time when Manichaeism mostly dominated representations of the past. To suggest that intellectuals, like other people, acted on motives not determined by idealism was rather disquieting, especially considering that many of those who opposed protchronism had posts in the new government of Ion Iliescu.

Vasile is far from supporting such a moralist understanding of the situation, but the way in which he chooses to approach the subject of intellectual collaboration with communist officials harkens back to the comforting delimitations characteristic of the totalitarian model (while Verdery’s theoretical models were Bourdieu, Foucault, Bauman and Gramsci, Vasile relies on… Paul Johnson). Characteristic of this tendency is his use of Alexandru Ivasiuc in order to illustrate the situation of writers during the

8 Katherine Verdery, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Columbia University Press, New

York, 1999, pp. 21-22. 9 Unlike in this present volume, the author did approach the issue of financial motivation in

his previous volume. See Cristian Vasile, Literatura și artele în România comunistă: 1948-1953, with a preface by Vladimir Tismăneanu, Humanitas, Bucharest, 2010, pp. 103-107.

10 For an exception, see Z. Ornea, “Cultura, în vremea lui Ceaușescu între compromis și rezistență”, in Portrete, Minerva, București, 1999, pp. 426-430.

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period. Given his past as a political detainee, it is very probable that his rebellious tendencies settled down after his release from prison. A far more interesting example would have been that of a writer who continued to collaborate with communist officials without a history of imprisonment or marginalization, such as Marin Preda11.

By an exhaustive use of available sources on the first decade of Ceaușescu’s reign, consideration of previously ignored subjects, such as folkloristics and the amateur movements, and reconsideration of the year 1974, Cristian Vasile’s study is an important contribution to the existing studies on communist Romania and a worthwhile successor the his previous volumes dealing with the epoch. Despite these innovations, the work is still entrenched in outdated concepts (the mini Cultural Revolution) and methodology (the totalitarian model) from both Romanian and foreign historiography. If it were not for these weaknesses, the book would have easily become a standard synthesis of the period.

CONSTANTIN ALIN THEODOR

11 George Geacăr observed that his novel „The Scatterers” (Risipitorii), which went through

four editions, resembled the rewriting of history practiced by Party historians, in which the inconvenient past was airbrushed or eliminated. G. Geacăr, Marin Preda și mitul omului nou, Cartea Românească, București, 2004, p. 64

ABSTRACTS ARMAND GOȘU, OCTAVIAN MANEA, The Consequences of the

Militarization of Crimea for the Wider Black Sea Region The article explores the contours of the new security environment created in Europe after the annexation of Crimea. Specifically, the authors are debating the impact of this territorial seizure for the Black Sea, while highlighting the danger of access-denial capabilities that Moscow is investing in. Overall, these trends suggest that Russia aims to build its own zone of exclusion designed to keep NATO’s presence at bay and that is becoming, step by step, a danger for the regional commons.

Keywords: Crimea, Black Sea, Russia, NATO, anti-access (A2), area-denial (AD).

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH, Romania’s Foreign Policy Towards the Wider Black Sea Area in the Aftermath of the 2007 EU-Accession. A by-Product of Exogenous Influences, Colliding Interests and Energy Rivalries. This paper aims to uncover and assess the impact, the nature and the magnitude of exogenously articulated influences in the formulation and development of Romania’s foreign policy deliverables engulfing the Wider Black Sea Area during the first years of the post-EU accession period (2007-2010). In this context, the document will put an emphasis on the overlapped pattern of influences – shaped by EU, US and Russia – and which played a key role in the development of the regional geometry in terms of security, political and economical outcomes.

Keywords: Romanian foreign policy, Americanization, Russian Federation, Wider Black Sea Area, energy security.

LIANA ANDREEA IONIȚĂ, Is European Union Law a Fully Self-Contained

Regime?A Theoretical Inquiry of the Functional Legal Regimes in the Context of Fragmentation of International Law. The fragmentation of international law has led to the emergence of specialized and (quasi) autonomous legal regimes – the “self-contained

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regimes” or special regimes. This article aims to investigate the degree to which European Union law could be a potential candidate for a “self-contained regime” and questions the relationship between this special regime and general international law. The methodological approach consists in providing a critical analysis of the Report on Fragmentation of International Law of the International Law Commission, concluded in 2006 and the ECJ case law in order to identify and explain pro et contra arguments regarding the following assertion: although EU law is not totally decoupled from general principles of international law, the new legal order of the EU has taken a historical turn towards self-containedness. Embracing the European legal perspective, this inquiry will advocate a presumption in favor of the self-contained character of the EU legal order, based on the EU sui generis modus operandi, the establishment of its own constitutional legal order, accommodating its own norms, techniques and features of modern law-making within its sphere of application, albeit the possible fallback on general international state responsibility and countermeasures mechanisms in case the mechanisms inherent in the EU system fail.

Keywords: EU law, fragmentation of international law, self-contained regimes.

MARIÁN SEKERÁK, Why Praying “Hail, Mary” Does Not Denote to Invade

Iraq and to Accept Capitalism? Contemporary Catholicism and Its Relation to Neoconservative Ideology. Since the beginning of Pope Francis’ pontificate we have been witnessing that the vast number of neoconservatives overtly criticize him. They blame the Bishop of Rome for being Marxist and Leninist because of his statements about global capitalism, free market economy and causes of poverty. In this paper I argue that identifying Christianity (and Catholicism especially) with Neoconservatism is both methodologically and politically wrong. By citing various official Vatican documents, papal encyclicals, exhortations, speeches and other writings I try to prove that the Catholic doctrine (including Catholic Social Teaching) should not be equated with the conservative wing of Christians. Moreover, I show that the Catholic Church cannot be deemed conservative and unchangeable because her teaching has undertaken many reforms during centuries, for example in case of the freedom of conscience and religion, optimal type of government, competencies of Church’s own members, incineration of deceased persons, or burying of self-murderers. In conclusion, I remind that Catholic Church’s doctrine claiming that the “adherence to a political

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alliance will never be ideological but always critical” is still valid and binding for all Catholics.

Keywords: Catholic Social Teaching, Neoconservatism, Catholicism, U.S. foreign policy.

ESZTER PETRONELLA SOÓS, Comparing Orbánism and Gaullism. The

Gaullist Physiognomy of Orbán’s Post-2010 Hungary. The right wing Hungarian governing party (Fidesz – Alliance of Young Democrats), often refers to France and French Gaullism as a political inspiration. This paper asserts that, despite some limitations, Gaullism is a viable analogy for better understanding the nature of Orbánism. The article identifies the major characteristics of Gaullism and Orbánism in order to systematically compare them by addressing the topics of: national grandeur and the importance of foreign policy; anti-liberalism, populism and etatism; antiparliamentarism; charismatic leadership and direct democracy; legality and legitimacy; the creation of a new constitution and the movement's approach to history. The concluding remarks discuss the limits of the analogy and make suggestions for further analyses.

Keywords: France, Hungary, Gaullism, Orbánism, comparison. ALEXANDRU VOLACU, On the Ideological Incompatibilities of Distributive

Justice. In this paper I provide a broad evaluation of the place which distibutive justice occupies within the space of political ideologies. Specifically, I decompose the concept of distributive justice into five constituent elements: pattern, currency, constraints on distribution, site and scope and show the incompatibilites which exist between operationalizations of these elements and various political ideologies. I conclude that social-democracy is the ideology which most faithfully embodies the ideal of distributive justice and that under certain interpretations of its elements, feminism, environmentalism and cosmopolitanism also require distributive justice as part of their ideological cores. I claim that, by contrast, right-wing libertarianism, conservatism, anarchism and monist ideologies are necessarily disqualified by some of the elements of distributive justice and that under mainstream theories on distributive constraints, socialism seems to fall into the same category.

Keywords: currency of justice, distributive justice, patterns, political ideologies.

AUTORES

ARMAND GOȘU Ph.D. in Russian History (Moscow, 1998). Associate professor of Russian Politics, Political and Diplomatic History of Russian Empire and Soviet Union at the Faculty of Political Sciences, University of Bucharest. Counselor (for the former Soviet countries) at the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Minister cabinet (2010-2012). Researcher at the Romanian Diplomatic Institute of the Romanian Ministry of Foreign Affairs, since 2006. Deputy Editor in Chief (2005-2009) and Chief Editor (2013-2014) of the Revista 22 edited by the Group for the Social Dialogue. Books: Între Napoleon și Alexandru I. Principatele dunărene la începutul secolului al XIX-lea, Editura Academiei Române, 2008; La troisième coalition antinapoléonienne et la Sublime Porte ‒ 1805, avec un préface de Mihai Maxim, Les Éditions ISIS, Istanbul, 2003; (editor) Despre Holocaust şi Comunism. Anuarul Institutului Român de Istorie Recentă, vol. I, 2002, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2003; (editor) Politică externă comunistă şi exil anticomunist. Anuarul Institutului Român de Istorie Recentă, vol. II, 2003, Editura Polirom, Iaşi, 2004; (coeditor) Istoria comunismului din România. Vol. I. Documente. Perioada Gheorghe Gheorghiu Dej (1945-1965), volum editat de Mihnea Berindei, Dorin Dobrincu, Armand Goșu, Editura Humanitas, 2009; (coeditor) Istoria comunismului din România. Vol. I. Documente. Nicolae Ceaușescu (1965-1971), editori Mihnea Berindei, Dorin Dobrincu, Armand Goșu, Editura Polirom, 2012. He is the author of dozens policy papers and hundreds articles in the Romanian press or international media, and has given hundreds of interviews for radio, television and print media on the evolutions of the former Soviet republics. ([email protected])

LIANA ANDREEA IONIȚĂ PhD Candidate in Political Science at the University of Bucharest and PhD Fellow at the Romanian Academy, Iași Branch, she is specialised in the fragmentation of International Law and the relationship between European Law and International Law. Her research interests also cover the areas of diplomacy and security, Human Rights and world politics.

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She has benefited from international academic exchanges at the IEP Bordeaux (2008) and University of Galatasaray (2011), and from professional training courses at the Romanian Diplomatic Institute (2011-2012). She has worked in the field of Human Rights and International Relations, with a particular emphasis on women’s rights and children’s rights in conflict areas within NATO Headquarters in Brussels, in Operations Division (2013). ([email protected] )

OCTAVIAN MANEA Journalist specialized in Euro-Atlantic security issues writing for 22 weekly and Foreign Policy Romania. He has recently graduated, as a Fulbright Scholar, an MA in International Relations with a focus on global security from Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs (Syracuse University). ([email protected])

EDUARD RUDOLF ROTH PhD candidate in International Relations at the National School of Political Science and Public Administration from Bucharest. He graduated International Business and Economics at Bucharest University of Economic Studies, and holds a Master’s degree in International Relations at the University of Kent at Canterbury and a Master’s degree in Public Administration at the University of Bucharest. ([email protected])

MARIÁN SEKERÁK Ph.D. candidate in Political Science, Institute of Political Studies, Faculty of Social Sciences, Charles University in Prague, the Czech Republic. He studied political science at Matej Bel University in Banská Bystrica, Slovakia (Bachelor: 2011, Master: 2013). He specializes on political theory and philosophy, theories of democracy, diplomatic activities of the Holy See and selected theological issues. In 2013 he published a book entitled Economic Democracy: History, Theory and Practice (in Slovak Ekonomická demokracia: Dejiny, teória a prax, UMB, Banská Bystrica). His scientific articles and book reviews appeared in journals such as Teorija in Praksa, Studia theologica, Politologická revue (Czech Political Science Review), Studia Politica Slovaca, Politička Misao: Croatian Political Science Review, Politické vedy, Acta Oeconomica Universitatis Selye, Acta Politologica, and others. ([email protected]).

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ESZTER PETRONELLA SOÓS MA in political science (University ELTE, Budapest, 2009) and MA in French language and literature (University ELTE, Budapest, 2008). She finished her doctoral studies at the Doctoral School of Political Science at ELTE Faculty of Law, where she is also a guest lecturer teaching an English-language seminar called French politics. Her thesis is about contemporary gaullism in France, its defense is to be expected in 2015. Between 01/2015-07/2015, she participates, as a junior research fellow, in a research project on political leadership conducted by the Hungarian Academy of Sciences' Institute for Political Science. Besides her research and teaching activities she works as a political consultant. ([email protected])

ALEXANDRU VOLACU PhD candidate in Political Science at the National School of Political and Administrative Studies (SNSPA), Bucharest, Romania. He obtained an MA degree in Political Theory and Analysis and a BA degree in Political Science from the Department of of Political Science – SNSPA. Latest publications: “Mixed strategy Nash Equilibrium and Quantal Response Equilibrium. An experimental comparison using RPS games”, Theoretical and Applied Economics, 21 (10), 2014; “Mărimea și structura legislativului” și “Analiza economică a comportamentului religios” (with Ștefan Colbu), in Mihai Ungureanu (ed.), Instituții, Alegeri individuale și acțiune colectivă, Polirom, Iaşi, 2014; “Problema bunurilor comune. O introducere în teoria clasică şi cea ostromiană” (with Iris-Patricia Golopenţa), in Adrian Miroiu, Iris-Patricia Golopenţa (eds.), Acţiune colectivă şi bunuri comune în societatea românească, Polirom, Iaşi, 2015; Modern Dilemmas: Understanding Collective Action in the 21st Century (co-edited with Dylan Kissane), Ibidem-Verlag, Stuttgart, 2015. ([email protected])

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