Pierre Chabal – författare

Ces colloques Asie–Europe consacrés aux approches juridiques et politiques permettent de comparer des systèmes différents sans d’abord en maîtriser toutes les nuances changeantes. Leur parti-pris est de faire se rencontrer des collègues de trois pays ou pays d’Eurasie (Kazakhstan, France, Corée, bientôt Chine et Russie) et les laisser dialoguer en tant que spécialistes de ‘leur’ système nationale pour faciliter les comparaisons.

De ces initiatives construites, il ressort deux éléments. Malgré les certitudes chez certains Européens que le droit communautaire de l’UE est unique en son genre, le droit régional n’est qu’un genre de droit international. Malgré les difficultés pour les centrasiatiques dans leur transition postsoviétique d’imaginer un droit transfrontières, il existe un besoin de gestion commune des progrès juridiques de construction de cette partie de l’Asie.

Il est délicat d’éviter la tentation de voir des « modèles » à tirer de tel ou tel système politique ou juridique. La tentation inverse est de rejeter un système comme transposable parce que trop différent. Cet ouvrage montre qu’il faut connaître les caractéristiques des autres solutions adoptées pour s’en inspirer, mieux comprendre, voire améliorer, un appareil institutionnel et normatif, issue autant de l’histoire d’un pays que des influences reçues.

Ces colloques et les publications qu’ils engendrent illustrent un ingrédient de la coopération universitaire internationale : le facteur humain. Des rencontres professionnelles, lorsqu’elles trouvent un écho encourageant et une confiance sincère de la part de collègues altruistes et généreux, aboutissent toujours. Nul obstacle ne peut venir à bout du patient dévouement et de l’enthousiasme qui pousse à croire que c’est à leur éthique que l’on reconnait les hommes et les femmes de bonne volonté.

Il existera bientôt, n’en doutons pas !, de multiples entreprises comparatistes entre les multiples sous-régions du continent eurasiatique. Nous sommes heureux d’avoir eu la chance de faire partie des pionnières envolées et des premières réussites !

This book analyses the legal and political systems of three different regions of the Asian/Eurasian continent. More precisely it compares the origins of such systems as both the ancient foundations inherited from the past and the founding principles of modern systems today. It suggests that the European constructions, the East-Asian dynamics and the Centralasian transitions, often studied separately or at best in a comparison of only two of them, ought to be approached as three variations on a theme. The value for the readers and the challenge for the authors is to situate these origins within both legal norms and traditions, whether Latin or Asian, as well as within modern Anglo-Saxon common-law dimensions and remnants of the Soviet system.

After Le régionalisme et ses limites (Peter Lang, 2016) and Mutations de société et réponses du droit (Peter Lang, 2017), this book furthers international, comparative research presented at conferences in Kazakhstan in 2014, France in 2016 and Korea in 2017. It covers i) law and politics in modern State-building, ii) formation and development of civil and economic law, iii) constitutionalism in Asia and in Europe, iv) international law and international relations.

The main purpose of the book is to examine from numerous and distinct, albeit complementary perspectives how logistics feeds into region-building. The angle of approach is to reach resolutely beyond logistical and material aspects of border-crossing in order to tackle cultural, symbolic, identity-based as well as institutional, legal and political dimensions of the contemporary ‘pooling’ of sovereignties in today’s Eurasia. Thus, constitutive chapters of the book draw from analyses as remote as historical, environmental, diplomatic and cybernetic, to mention but a few. Its main conclusions are that region-building consists largely in concrete changes that affect material aspects of country-to-country dynamics, not just in material-political decisions even if these remain necessary to launch a novel process and to secure it into confidence-building. This blend of logics also involves a multi-scale evolution whereby both local (infra-regional) and regional (supra-national) levels, taken together, make sense. Hence, to probe into one dimension only – the changing nature of borders, both in Europe and Asia, from lines of sovereign divisions to passage-points for exchanges –, induces the bilateral and multi-lateral capacity to ‘innovate’ within long-term historical givens and to turn nationalistic hostility into dynamics of multiplication of shared exchanges and profits. From a methodological requirement, comparing what seems at first, very different – a fully integrating Europe and a newly co-operative Asia – makes it possible, on the face of it, to uncover and decipher dynamics that are similar in their essence (regional, post-war) even if they differ in details (institutional idiosyncrasies, hurdles).

After reflecting On the European and Asian origins of legal and political systems: views from Korea, Kazakhstan and France (2018), the authors address in this book three intertwined issues. First, how systems that were established long ago are challenged by the necessity to adapt to change both in time, rapidly after the end of the cold war, and in space, across the continent of Eurasia and no longer ‘simply’ in their sub-region. Second, how these systems evolve both in a sui generis manner and adopt, each for itself, reforms at the national and sub-regional levels; and also in a reciprocal manner, learn and borrow from each other towards a ‘regional legal order’ in the making. Third, how extra-judicial evolutions, such as the logistical and commercial dynamics of the Belt and Road Initiative(s) appear more and more as the source or the cause of that very change affecting all Eurasian actors and interests. Examined elsewhere from a broad social sciences perspective, in the publication Cross-border exchanges: Eurasian perspectives on logistics and diplomacy (2019), these issues are here systematically analysed by a mix of conceptual and doctrinal perspectives and of textual, jurisprudential and positivist perspectives. Naturally, the challenge within the challenge to ascertain is whether a pan-regional or global legal ‘model’ would be capable of impacting change in general and legal change in particular as part of the ‘post-cold-war 2:’, where the political-military legacy is overcome by and yields to business concerns reaching beyond cautious legal constructions.

A la suite d'un ouvrage sur les origines européennes et asiatiques des systèmes juridiques et politiques d'Eurasie, ce livre décrit comment ceux-ci s'adaptent aux changements qu'ils subissent, notamment de la part des innovations régionales comme les Nouvelles Routes de la Soie, la Coopération de Shanghai et l'Union Economique Eurasienne.

This book analyses the gradual fusion of Europe and Asia into a Eurasian dynamic combining institutional and identity aspects. Gathering about thirty scholars from a dozen Eurasian countries, it shows that Eurasian continental developments are outgrowing sub-region designations such as Western Europe, Southeast Asia, East Asia and Central Asia.