Volume 10, Number 2, 1979

EN:

This paper proceeds from the premise that profound changes have transformed the structure of world politics and that, consequently, a new, transnational paradigm of the global system needs to be developed. All the existing paradigms are found to be incapable of handling the proliferation of actors, the declining capacities of governments, the mushrooming of subgroup loyalties, the growing demands of the Third World, and the expansion of the range of issues on the global agenda - to mention only the most salient of the transformations that have rendered world politics both more decentralized and more complex. What is needed, it is argued, is a model organized around micro units of analysis that are common to both the new and old actors, issues, and structures and that thus form the foundation of the many new macro aggregations which have come to share the world stage with governments and international organizations.

After developing a conception of four types of aggregational processes through which micro parts are converted into macro wholes, the analysis focuses on two types of transnational roles as worthy of consideration as the basic micro units of the new paradigm. The two types are designated as primitive and derivative roles. The former refers to roles in macro units that would not exist if their activities did not span national boundaries (the multinational corporation is an example), while the latter refers to roles in macro aggregations that do not depend on transnational interactions for their existence even though performances in them to have transnational consequences (examples are farmers, parents, and car drivers, who are both active and inadvertent participants in, respectively, today's global food, population, and energy issues).

Whatever the issue involved, and irrespective of whether they are primitive or derivative, all transnational roles can be located on a legitimacy-authority continuum and seen as varying between two extremes, one which gives exclusive priority to the citizen role in a nation-state and the other which accords exclusive loyalty to the transnational role. The tourist and the terrorist are offered as examples of roles at the two extremes of this important continuum.

EN:

This study is comprised of two parts. The first is essentially descriptive and seeks to define with greater precision the nature of the Western world's asbestos fiber needs, account being made currently-known technology and the existence of substitutes. Asbestos ore reserves are then examined with a view to evaluating the constraints conditioning current asbestos fiber production. With the exception of that carried out in the U.S.S.R., this production is highly concentrated in Quebec whose surplus output is exported to every continent at prices that have experienced a staggering increase since 1973 even though international trade in asbestos fibers is conducted via multinational firms.

The second part of the study contains a cost-benefit analysis of Quebec's new policy as well as a brief consideration of the political forces that have induced the Government of Quebec to adopt it.

EN:

Within the shifting context of international relations — official and transnational - of the last quarter of the XX^th 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.

EN:

The direction and pace of efforts to co-ordinate the foreign policy making process within the executive branch of middle-size states may depend on subtle but cumulatively important shiefs in domestic and external environments. The experience of the Canadian government from 1976 to 1978 suggests the effects which four types of environmental change can have. The approach of a federal election was accompanied by a reduced emphasis on the formal procedures of the structured cabinet committee System instituted in the early years of the first Trudeau government. An increased threat to national unity, as registered in the November 1976 election of a Parti Québécois majority provincial government, concentrated decisional activity at the very centre of government, and had only indirect effects on the formal foreign policy planning process. Concern with persistent economic dilemmas, registered most clearly in the imposition of an expenditure restraint programme in August 1978, directly increased the use of the budgetary process and prompted moves toward foreign service integration. And the intensification of a decline in tension in relations with the United States, and the accompanying emergence of new global problems, led, in turn, to a transfer of dynamic, creative co-ordinatively-oriented leadership into the Department of External Affairs, a reorganization of the Department, and a strong stress on re-orienting its role toward that of a modem central policy agency.

EN:

Throughout the XIX^th century federalism in Eastern Europe sought to regroup small nations and states within federal structures capable of guaranteeing their collective independence in the long-term vis-à-vis those powers directly interested in that region of the continent.

After the First World War the federalist forces of Eastern Europe, conscious of the tragic effects of the balkanization of Central and Eastern Europe, had approached regional reconstruction in a spirit of unity. This unity, whose spirit and idea derived from a common historical experience, was taken up by the progressive forces active within the resistance during the Second World War.

Shortly thereafter, among the political forces tending to promote regional unity, the socialist and communist parties engaged in activities of major importance. From their initial perspective, the solidarity of the Eastern Countries was to lead to the establishment of federal structures without the adhesion of the Soviet Union.