Contenu du sommaire : Varia

This paper focuses on practices of inter-municipal cooperation taking place in France and in Brazil. The intention is to reflect about the increase of the local scale's strength in societies with distinct conceptions about the role of the State and about its mechanisms of social control. On the one hand, the aim is to underscore the processes of formation and diffusion of inter-municipal cooperative structures occurring in Brazil and in France by considering their dissimilar institutional arrangements. On the other hand, we want to raise the theoretical framework developed by Michael Mann, who brings innovative features to enhance analysis in the field of Political Geography. Finally, we derive a set of issues that arise in the two countries and broaden the debate on the opportunities and barriers to inter-municipal cooperation in two very different models of state.

Regionalism, as a socio-political project, involves the social production of knowledge; common interests are identified and a common identity around these shared interests is promoted.  In the Eastern Mediterranean three projects of transnational environmental cooperation construct geographically different regions – a region with Israel, the Palestinian Territories and Jordan at the center, the Mediterranean, and the Arab region. The analysis of these contrasting projects draws on literature on framing, Middle East regionalism and regional environmental governance. The review asks whether these contrasting initiatives are competing or part of a dynamic process in which they positively reinforce each other.

This paper looks into place's multidimensionality through the example of a western Kingston's slum. Reading the urban – or more accurately proto-urban – landscape of the peculiar Trenchtown's community allows us to reveal the place's politics, culture and identity. Trenchtown is the birthplace of reggae stars such as Bob Marley and many more. Explaining this landscape brings in factors such as violence linked to political malpractices (garrison politics, clientelism, etc.), State's abandon tied to Jamaican society's segregation as well as international macroeconomics, chronic economic poverty and huge cultural wealth (notably through Reggae music that emerged there and Rastafari culture).    

The partition of Poland and its occupation by foreign powers from 1795 to 1918 is still a major indicator in assessing nowadays' organisation of the polish space. Ruled by three neighbouring countries, whose neither political system, nor economic development level were comparable, the polish territories experienced 123 years of radically different socio-economic trajectories. Today, the former state borders of the three empires which once ruled Poland are still clearly visible on numerous maps of the country, particularly at an agricultural level. Six years after Poland's accession to the European Union, this article tries to delineate the effect of the common policies on the persistence of this historical « scar » dividing Poland's rural territory.

This paper explores and tries to understand the recent and challenging multiplication of political institutions aiming to manage the cross-border genevan urban area. The recent and increasing international collaboration at regional scale strikes indeed for a city which accommodated, among others, the League of Nations since 1920. We argue that the conscious will to transfer a part of genevan urbanization, mainly on the northern part of french Haute-Savoie, favoured in turn a wide range of risks as well as their official recognition. It helps to explain the institutional evolution mentionned. Such an interpretation is consistent with the trend of urbanization to produce the main conditions of its evolutions, while pushing human societies to manage previous policies unwanted and partly predictable effects. A general scheme, relying on systemic analysis, is proposed to depict this process. Such an interpretation induces to discuss if not to reduce the relevance of cultural and specific political factors, such as the french-swiss boundary effect, on the progressive formation of the genevan urban area.

Electoral absenteeism is a common studied subject in the Anglo-Saxon and French scientific world. But researches about it in Belgium, where voting is compulsory are not far from being null. The purpose of this article is to analyze how variables such as age, ethnic origins, gender and social and economical status are important regarding the abstention rate. Two analysis will be done successively: an individual one in five different voting stations in Charleroi then an ecological one via a multivariate analysis in four former municipalities of the city of Charleroi. It shows the significant importance of the age and origin factors in both individual and ecologicalstudies. On the other hand, the gender fact has no real impact on the abstention rate as long as the age is not taken into account. Furthermore, the multivariate study emphasizes the fact that an immigrate environment clearly tends to rise up the abstention rate, whereas the social status does not influence this reality that much. In the end, we can point out that the abstention rate is more significant in areas where there are a lot of rest homes inside this specific region of Belgium .

The North League (LegaNord) is now and for the third time in its short history part of a coalition government led by Silvio Berlusconi. Its political program advocates the transformation of Italy into a federal state with fiscal federalism for more autonomous macro-regions. Nevertheless, initially, this party was born in 1991, claiming for the independence of a new Nation, called Padania, which would gather the northern regions of the country. In this paper we intend to focus on two salient features of the North League. First, we will see that the North League is responsible for the return of the notion of territorial identity on the Italian political scene after periods (Unity, fascism, post-war times) of repression of any discussion on the subject. Second, we will also show that this return is ambiguous because Umberto Bossi resorts to two different definitions of the territory of Padania, thereby playing with two kinds of claims and voters.

The European Union has put into place a series of instruments and regulations in order to enhance the cooperation between border regions. This initiative contributes to the European integration and to the construction of the Common European Space. The European instruments and regulations are not only implemented along the internal borders, i.e. between the border countries, but also along the external borders, i.e. between member and third countries.  In this paper, we draw the balance sheet of the territorial cross border cooperation between Russia and the Baltic countries. In this part of Europe, cross border cooperation suffers serious setbacks. No projects have been launched between 2007 and 2010, although European cooperation instruments were deeply reformed. The causes of such a failure lie inside and outside EU. Besides, the European Union has not managed to build instruments that could be easily used by project partners and political authorities in third countries. And what was initially presented by the European Commission as a purely technical cooperation programme is seriously hampered by deep political disagreements and tensions between States, and by a lack of vision in the EU. It seems that priority is given to security more than to cooperation by top political stakeholders.

From a geographical and a geopolitical point of view the Danubian cooperation has taken place in an eventful context linked to the economic and political mutations in Central and Eastern European Countries and to the eastwards enlargement of the European Union. The residents living near the Danube consider it simultaneously as a common resource, a border, a waterway and a source of risks inherent in human activities and climatic vagaries. These factors have created possibilities for new modalities of Danubian cooperation such as the emergence of the regional scale in the cooperation process, and the build up of the environmental discourse as an argument used to promote that process.