The nation is at once an emancipatory and an exclusionist concept. This is the theme developed by Alain Dieckhoff, CNRS research fellow and director of Sciences Po CERI, in his latest book, Nationalism and the Multination State*. Grounding his analysis in the history of the nation-state, Dieckhoff helps us understand the shifting manifestations of the concept and the tensions generated by nationalism. Interview with the author.

In a recent article published in the Capital Markets Law Journal, Jérôme Sgard, researcher at CERI, analyses how the International Monetary Fund (IMF) acted as a third-party in a total of 109 debt restructurings between 41 debtor states and their creditor banks, how this regime emerged through trial and error during the 1970s; and how it was implemented and accounted for and justified after the 1982 Mexican crisis.

Extract:

Who hasn’t grumbled about red tape? Yet while complaining about bureaucracy is easy, understanding its processes, remits and many facets is less so. From the observation that bureaucratization is a continuous process, Béatrice Hibou, CNRS senior researcher and political economy specialist at CERI Sciences Po, questions the logic behind this development and its political signification. What is bureaucratization? Why and how does it interfere in every aspect of our lives? Can we resist?

Politics in the Interest of Capital

a MaxPo Discussion Paper Series, by Cornelia Woll

Abstract

The rise in inequality has been explained with reference to organized groups and the lobbying of the financial sector. This article argues that the image of politics as organized combat is contradicted by empirical evidence on lobbying in the United States, and does not travel well to Europe. The power of finance does not operate through organized political influence.

The Bureaucratization of the World in the Neoliberal Era, An International and Comparative Perspective

by Béatrice Hibou

Palgrave Macmillan, May 2015

At the point where Max Weber meets Michel Foucault, Béatrice Hibou analyzes the political dynamics underlying a set of norms, rules, and procedures that form contemporary beurocracy. Neoliberal bureaucracy is a vector of discipline and control: even more, it produces social and political indifference.

In his disturbing and timely political history of the ‘Deep State’ in the Middle East, Jean-Pierre Filiu reveals how the autocracies of Syria, Egypt, and Yemen crushed the democratic uprisings of the ‘Arab Revolution’. They did so by turning to the shadowy intelligence agencies and internal security arms of the so-called ‘Deep State’ — emulating strategies pioneered in Kemalist Turkey — who had decades of experience in dealing with internal dissent, as well as to street gangs (the Baltaguiyya in Egypt) or death squads (the Shabbiha in Syria) to enforce their will.

The last issue of the European Review of International Studies - a journal issued with the participation of the CERI -  is dedicated to former colonial powers and the management of political crises in their former colonies

Table of contents

Christophe Jaffrelot has been awarded the Ramnath Goenka Award for Excellence in the commentary and interpretative category for "incisive writing on India's new political sadhus", which included his articles on Swami Aseemanand and Baba Ramdev, published in the Indian magazine Caravan in 2011.

• Jacques Sémelin
  

Jacques Sémelin, CNRS Senior Researcher at CERI Sciences Po, was granted one of the 2014 James Lawson Awards for his outstanding contribution to the research on civil resistance.