Keywords: conference report; InterPARES Summer School;
InterPARES Summer SchoolSan Benedetto (Italy), July 7-11, 2023
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Keywords: Coțatcu - Cetățuia; tell-settlement; Starčevo-Criș culture; Stoicani-Aldeni cultural group; Bronze Age; archaeobotanical analyses; stratigraphical section;
The site is located in the hilly area, at about 2 km North-West from the edge of Coțatcu village (Podgoria Commune, Buzău County), on a terrace promontory overviewing the valley of the brook with the same name.In 2023 a stratigraphical section was made in a segment of the P1 trench, in the perimeter of squares 7 and 8 (12.80-14.80 meters). This approach was necessary for collecting archaeobotanical samples from all levels of the tell section, that will be analyzed and interpreted within the Romanian-Hungarian project DOMINO-CLIMATE (The Domino Effect: Tracking changes in climate, environment and subsistence economy at the collapse of Neolithic lifestyle in Eastern-Central and South-East Europe). The results achieved in this campaign also allowed the research and interpretation of the stratigraphy of a segment of the P1 trench to be much more nuanced.
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Keywords: Education; National Examination Average Score; Final Score; Secondary Educational Level;
The National Examination in Romania holds significant importance for students, determining high school admissions and shaping future opportunities. Analysing 2023 results, it was found that despite passing grades, many students faced admission challenges, especially rural students. Disparities persist between rural and urban students, intensifiedby factors such as absenteeism and limited access to educational resources.The digitalisation of the 2024 National Examination reflects a changing educational landscape, presenting both opportunities and challenges. This paper highlights the interaction of sex, residency, and online teaching experience on National Examination results from 2017 to 2023, using microdata retrieved from data.gov.ro. Rural students and those who did not experience online teaching generally obtained lower scores compared to urban students and those who had online teaching exposure. The correlation between performance in the National Evaluation Exam and school dropout rates underscores the critical importance of education in societal inequalities. It is crucial to keep investigating ways to reduce educational gaps and make education more inclusive in Romania. While this study provides valuable insights, it is not without limitations. However, limitations, such as variations in examination difficulty and disruptions due to external factors like teacher strikes, should be considered in interpreting the findings. Future research should continue to explore strategies for mitigating these disparities and promoting educational equality in Romania.
More...Keywords: book review; enviromental apocalypse; climate crisis;
Review of: Kowalewski, J. (Ed). (2023). The Environmental Apocalypse: Interdisciplinary Reflections on the Climate Crisis. Routledge.
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Keywords: nation; political nation; ethnic nation; national minorities; ethnic minorities
The article aims to determine how the concept of ‘nation’ has evolved in Polish constitutional law against the background of examples of political practice in the years 2015–2023. The author verified the following hypothesis: despite the civic concept of the nation resulting from the Constitution of the Republic of Poland, the United Right government, for political purposes, narrowed its understanding to the cultural and ethnic nation, which resulted the rights of national and ethnic minorities being limited. The first part of the text contains an interpretation of constitutional provisions, historical and in force, devoted to the nation, as well as an analysis of judicature and doctrine. It is established that despite the political concept of the nation in force in Poland, some of the doctrine takes a position that privileges foreigners of Polish origin and those who have undergone assimilation in the procedure of applying for Polish citizenship. The actions of the Polish authorities aimed at national and ethnic minorities, which became hostages of problems that were not resolved at the interstate level, are assessed negatively (in the second part of the text, this is illustrated by case studies of the Ukrainian, Lemko and German minorities). Attacks on minorities driven by current political needs set a dangerous precedent. In the future, similar actions may be targeted at other social groups.
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Keywords: prawa kobiet; kampania wyborcza; wybory parlamentarne w Polsce
Cel badawczy niniejszego artykułu stanowiło zweryfikowanie, w jakim stopniu tematyka praw kobiet była zawarta w programach poszczególnych partii politycznych, biorących udział w kampanii wyborczej do parlamentu w 2023 r. w Polsce. Ocenie poddane zostały programy następujących komitetów wyborczych: KW Prawo i Sprawiedliwość (PiS), KKW Koalicja Obywatelska PO .N IPL Zieloni. (KO), KKW Trzecia Droga: Polska 2050 Szymona Hołowni - Polskie Stronnictwo Ludowe (PSL), KW Nowa Lewica oraz KW Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość. Analiza programów poszczególnych partii oraz wypowiedzi polityków potwierdziła tezę, iż kwestia praw kobiet była stale obecna w parlamentarnej kampanii wyborczej w 2023 r. W jej weryfikacji wykorzystana została metoda porównawcza, mająca na celu zestawienie dokumentów programowych opisywanych ugrupowań i wyciągnięcie konkretnych wniosków. Głównymi tematami, w kontekście równości płci i praw kobiet, okazały się kwestie zdrowia reprodukcyjnego m. in. procedury in vitro, możliwości przerywania ciąży, opieki okołoporodowej, ale także wsparcia polskich rodzin w wychowywaniu dzieci i łączeniu obowiązków rodzicielskich z zawodowymi.
More...Keywords: Montenegro; Western Balkans; political instability; technical government; cohabitation
In 2020, Montenegro saw significant political changes. For the first time in the history of Montenegrin parliamentarism, the government was formed not by the Democratic Party of Socialists – the party that has dominated the political scene for almost three decades. Over the next three years, three different governments were established. The government led by the Prime Minister Dritan Abazović was dismissed after only four months of its formation, but for various reasons he remained Prime Minister for over a year. The aim of the paper is to analyze the political situation in Montenegro during the so-called technical government of Prime Minister Dritan Abazović (from August 2022 to October 2023) to investigate the causes of its instability.
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Keywords: Konfederacja Wolność i Niepodległość; women; politics; elections 2023;
The article analyses the program of the Freedom and Independence Confederation party in terms of demands for women and examines the reasons for the party’s popularity among voters, including primarily among women. The party’s intended goal was to respond to the needs of the egoist turn in Poland and to target its messages to young people who care about low and simple taxes. The party’s politicians wanted to party voters to create an image of the Confederation as a party of rebellion and, by hiding controversial figures, to encourage people with views not only on the far right but also on the center-ri- ght. The article also discusses why the party failed to achieve its intended goal of a double- digit result in the 2023 parliamentary elections 2023.
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Keywords: Nicolae Manolescu; criticism; literary history; essay writing; history of Romanian literature.
This review explores a particularly important topic, namely the portrait of one of the greatest literary critics and historians, Nicolae Manolescu. We have tried to draw an accurate and succinct portrait of the critic who has forever marked the history of Romanian literature. The review focuses its attention on the complex anthology that was published by Cartea Românească Publishing House in 2023. This anthology summarizes some of Nicolae Manolescu's most relevant critical texts and, at the same time, underlines and highlights the main attributes of a complete critic.
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Keywords: Turkey; politics; Erdogan; Elections;
The present research aims to identify the impact of Erdogan's victory on the basic budgets in Turkey and its impact on the opposition parties and the strength of the opposition, as well as on the Turkish economy, as the economic factor played a significant and influential role in the results of the Turkish elections, which led to the rise of the Justice and Development Party with Erdogan's victory. This party has an effect on the political and democratic process in the country. Thus, the investigation includes two axes: the first, political parties in Turkey, and the second, the Turkish elections in 2023 AD.
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Keywords: Poland; general election; electoral support; spatial patterns
RESEARCH OBJECTIVE:This article focuses on identifying the spatial patterns of electoral support for the main political actors, and searching for adequate determinants that explain this distribution of support, based on the results of the 2023 general election in Poland.THE RESEARCH PROBLEM AND METHODS:Is there a relationship between the basic morphological features of the voting space in Poland and the hierarchy of the settlement structure, along with the arrangement of regions associated with the country’s historical and political heritage? The methods used in the study include analysis of descriptive statistics, estimation of spatial autocorrelation, discriminant analysis, and cartographic methods.PROCESS OF ARGUMENTATION:The research process involves a two‑stage procedure: 1) identifying a general picture of spatial variation in electoral support for selected groupings, and basic clustering patterns of electoral support; and 2) estimating links between the observed patterns of support and their pre‑sumed determinants; that is, the country’s settlement hierarchy and historical‑political divisions.RESEARCH RESULTS:The spatial variability of the support indicators is characterised by a distinctive territorial distribution, based on the units of the settlement system and the boundaries of former historical divisions. The nature of this linkage indicates the changing layout of the voting space, associated with the increasing polarisation of citizens’ political preferences.CONCLUSIONS, INNOVATIONS, AND RECOMMENDATIONS:The current pattern of urban‑rural differentiation is related to the different pref‑erences of metropolitan (over 20,000 inhabitants) and rural or small‑town (up to 20,000 inhabitants) communities. The east‑west heterogeneity of Poland’s voting space is increasing due to similarities of preferences among the inhabitants of former Austrian and Russian Poland, on the one hand, and Prussian Poland and the Recovered Territories, on the other.
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Keywords: Uniejów; parliamentary elections;electoral behaviour
The aim of the article is to present the electoral behaviour of the residents of the Uniejów commune in the 2023 parliamentary elections from a local perspective. It presents basic electoral behaviour (turnout, voting method and results) in each district electoral commission located in the Uniejów commune. In the elections in the area covered by the analysis, the overwhelming majority voted in person at polling stations (voting by correspondence or by proxy was used less often than in the entire territory of Poland). The voting behaviour of the commune’s inhabitants shows some spatial differences between the city and the rural area. A higher turnout and slightly lower support for right-wing parties can be observed in the city.
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Keywords: Slovakia; general elections 2023; Smer-SD; SNS; foreign policy; populism
In the Slovak 2023 general election, foreign policy was of importance, as parties were divided along the pro-Western and pro-Russian fault line. Our paper analyses how the parties Smer-SD and SNS, major critics of the previous government and then current coalition members, framed foreign policy issues and events during the election campaign. We employ a framework analysis method to identify the main foreign policy related themes of Smer-SD and SNS and how they framed them. Our dataset consists of 145 posts published online by the parties. Our analysis reveals that the main pre-election topics were: the orientation of Slovak foreign policy, attitudes towards the West, and relations with Russia and Ukraine. The parties’ populism was manifested in the framing of their visions of Slovak foreign policy. Smer-SD and SNS shared with other European populists anti-Westernism, the call for multipolarity and a sovereign foreign policy. However, the historical context of both parties reveals that in spite of the populist framing of foreign relations, their government will probably not lead to a turnaround in Slovak foreign policy.
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Book review: De Brigard, Felipe. Memory and remembering. Cambridge University Press, 2023, 79 p. ISBN: 9781108955447
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Keywords: green taxes; Environmental Fund; obligation to give reason; failure to give reason; Environmental Fund Administration; proof; burden of proof; environmental obligations;
In the past decade, Romanian tax courts have seen a number of cases involving green taxes, due to the Environmental Fund. However, there is also a history of distorted interpretations of the national legislation by the Environmental Fund Administration. It is also the case at hand, which was decided on procedural matters. The Bucharest Court of Appeal first sanctioned the failure to give reason for the tax decisions, particularly since the case was administratively returned to the tax inspectors for further clarifications. The court also noticed that the relevant documents submitted by the taxpayer have been unlawfully rejected by the Environmental Fund Administration and that no contrary proof has been administered. It concluded that the taxpayer was able to prove that all its obligations had been fulfilled and that no supplementary contribution to the Environmental Fund was due.
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Keywords: parliamentary campaign; political communication; Catholic media; Polish bishops; elections;
The aim of the research undertaken was to analyze the institutional communication ofthe Polish Episcopal Conference during the 2023 parliamentary campaign. The analysis coveredbishops’ communications posted on the official website episkopat.pl and published in the periodfrom January 1, 2023 to October 13, 2023, as well as nationwide Catholic weekly magazines “Nie-dziela” and “Gość Niedzielny” from August 8, 2023 to October 13, 2023. Moreover, the positionof the so-called Toruń media (Radio Maryja, Telewizja Trwam) was also taken into account. Theauthor used the methods of discourse analysis, content analysis and literature review. During the2023 parliamentary campaign, Polish bishops were uninvolved political actors at the level of insti-tutional communication. The hierarchs did not support the United Right government and distancedthemselves from it politically. In turn, the nationwide Catholic media approved of the politicalactivities of the United Right candidates. The article increases the cognitive value in the area ofpolitical communication of the Polish Episcopal Conference.
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