Regions

After a rather long span of high growth rates, slow inflation and financial stability, the world faces a period of prices volatility, economic uncertainty, social instability and loss of confidence. In order to implement anti-deflationist and fiscal pro-growth policies, and to organise...

During the last twenty years, financial globalization has strongly stimulated world growth. But it entailed a negative consequence: the spread of the financial crisis all over the world. This crisis demonstrates how necessary a new world governance system is. It must be implemented on two...

Paradoxically, Russia's military success during the "five day war" in the South Caucasus in August 2008 highlighted the deplorable state of its conventional armed forces, weakened by years of underfunding, failed reforms and declining social prestige. Nevertheless, the Kremlin sees the...

Thirty years after the start of the policy of reform and opening up launched by Deng Xiaoping in 1978, the political system and Chinese society are considerably more open. However, there still are many gray areas, one of which is the question of decision-making: the way the decision-making...

Summary: This discussion paper proposes an analysis of incompleteness peace processes in Eastern Congo which have resulted in a stalemate - a stalemate which has encouraged the conflict's actors to prioritize using force in order to impose " their solution " (victorious blitzkrieg from...

The European Commission's proposal for an Eastern Partnership has found a groundswell of support in the run up to the Prague Eastern Summit in May. The Commission's vision sees both strengthened bilateralism as well as innovative multilateral initiatives and ‘flagship' projects to put...

On September 6, 2008, the 53 year-old Asif Ali Zardari won the presidential election by an overwhelming majority. In donning the presidential mantle, he described his victory as "another step towards the transition to democracy".

A number of countries have chosen recently to shift away from an exclusive support to trade multilateralism and towards regional or bilateral trade agreements. Being no exceptions in this respect, the Republic of South Korea and the European Union have engaged in a bilateral...

A widely held consensus view claims that East Asia has been shifting recently from a market-led to an institution-based form of regional economic integration, primarily as a result of the 1997-1998 financial crisis. Next to post-crisis financial cooperation schemes under the...

China has become an important provider of development assistance (through grants and soft loans) to Central Asian states. The focus of this study is the two states of the region most in need of aid: Tajikistan and Kyrgyzstan. The paper discusses the characteristics of Chinese assistance,...