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Biotechnologies have been perceived by authorities in the European Community as leverage for a new economic policy enabling industrialized countries to meet the twofold aspects of the petroleum crisis. As such, these technologies have become the subject of an ambitious European policy primarily aimed at ensuring technological reliability and at integrating them into an open and fair market. Paradoxically, just at the time this policy should have produced its first effects by allowing the marketing of products derived from genetically engineered organisms (GEOs) and their patenting, the policy's legitimacy has come into question. A series of crises concerning health safety issues (the contaminated blood scandal, mad cow disease) —despite the absence of any connection between the two —has fueled social unacceptability of biotechnologies owing both to doubts that have been raised regarding risk management and cultural reasons involved in the marketing of new food products. In these circumstances, to find a way out of the crisis legal measures are no longer used solely as an instrument in the service of industrial policy, they must also regenerate a symbolic role capable of mobilizing basic values and principles reasserting the primacy of the human being, plus a down-to-earth function in the organization of risk management networks to instill life and coherence into the precautionary principle in the field of international cooperation.

Joseph-Octave Plessis (1763-1825), the eleventh bishop and first archbishop of Québec City, left one of the most extensive personal libraries of his time, including nearly 700 titles and totalling some 3000 volumes. His collection includes books not only on theology and religion, but also on numerous other subjects that shed light on the intellectual and cultural outlook of this nineteenth century ecclesiastic, a figure profoundly attached to Catholic traditions, yet confronted by a Protestant colonial power and the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment.

This article provides a new approach, revolving around contested property relations, for theorizing the constitution, operation and transformation of geopolitical systems, exemplified with reference to early modern international relations. Against the cross-paradigmatic IR consensus that equates the Westphalian Settlement with the codification of modern international relations, the article shows to which degree 17th and 18th century European geopolitics remained tied to rather unique pre-modern practices. These cannot be understood on the basis of realist or constructivist premises. In contrast, the theoretical argument is that the proprietary and personalized character of dynastic sovereignty was predicated on pre-capitalist property relations. Dynasticism, in turn, translated into historically specific patterns of conflict and cooperation that were fundamentally governed by the competitive logic of geopolitical accumulation. The decisive break to international modernity comes with the rise of the first modern state–England. After the establishment of a capitalist agrarian property regime and the transformation of the English state in the 17th century, post-1688 Britain starts to restructure international relations in a long-term process of geopolitically combined and socially uneven development.

Keywords: relations sociales de propriété, capitalisme, dynasticisme, Marxisme politique, souveraineté, accumulation politique, traités de Westphalie, Social Property Regimes, capitalism, dynasticism, Political Marxism, Sovereignty, Political Accumulation, Westphalia, Relaciones sociales, capitalismo, dinasticismo, marxismo político, soberanía, acumulación política, tratados de Westfalia

Within the shifting context of international relations — official and transnational - of the last quarter of the XXth century, it would be appropriate to take a fresh look at the opening of federal states with special emphasis on the Canadian provinces. This opening poses political, economic, social, cultural and juridical problems, both national and international. The author conceptualizes the problem in three aspects : international organizations, international representation and international treaties. She offers suggestions and recommendations with a view to a greater decentralization of Canada's foreign policy.

On August 12th 1978 the People's Republic of China and Japan signed a treaty of peace and friendship that solemnly recognized the reconciliation between Peking and Tokyo. The original character and political, economic and geo-strategic meaning of this signal document can only be understood by placing it within Us true context. In fact, this context has two facets. The Sino-Japanese treaty can first be seen in an historical context that must be kept in mind since the « Far Eastern Question » has, from the end of the 19th century, been at the heart of Sino-Japanese and Russo-Japanese relations as well as constituting an ongoing concern for the major European powers. Prior to 1939, Japanese imperialism had succeeded in imposing its law in China and in East Asia establishing what Tokyo called a « co-prosperity sphere ». During the Second World War, the United States, Great Britain and the USSR - allies against the common enemy - had to take important decisions with regard to Japan to prepare the terms of occupation. The San Francisco Peace Treaty of 1951 established the new American-Japanese relationship. Normalization of Soviet-Japanese relations began with the signing of the joint declaration of 1956.The August 12th 1978 Peace Treaty between Peking and Tokyo can be further seen as part of specific diplomatic context comprising the Sino-Soviet conflict, East-West détente and the Sino-American rapprochement that opened the way - immediately after President Nixon's trip to China in February 1972 - for the Sino-Japanese rapprochement.Legally, the Treaty contains only five short sections, the most original of which being the « anti-hegemony » clause provided for in section 2. Diplomatically, it is not exaggerated to recognize in this Sino-Japanese agreement an element of a New International Political Order presently taking form and that has to necessarily accompany the implantation of the « New International Economic Order » that the countries of the Third World have been demanding since 1974.