Transitions Online_Around the Bloc-7 July
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Today’s news headlines: Britain’s Magnitsky sanctions; Estonia’s “strawberry war”; a precocious Romanian vlogger; and more.
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A modern administration is an administration that is open and transparent. Administration that has quality and timely communication with users of administrative services. It is an administration in which educated and competent civil servants work and are subject to a permanent grading and education system. The paper examines the classic model of public administration, the so-called Weberian public administration, the new public management, and the advantages and disadvantages of these systems. Four basic elements are crucial for the functioning of modern administration, namely: quality staff, retaining it in the service, further training, and especially the professionalization and depoliticisation of leadership positions. The rule of law cannot function without a good administration. Which system best suits a country depends on its specifics. It will rarely be a single system, but rather a combination of several systems. Advantages and disadvantages of individual systems will be briefly presented in the paper.
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In recent months much attention has been given to changes in the economies of Eastern Europe. Ideas of restructuring and privatization have received publicity in the West and, perhaps more significantly, have become a focus of discussion in these societies themselves. But notions of reform and experimentation are not new to the state socialist economies. At various times many of the East European socialist countries have experimented with reforms of the basic economic mechanism. Hungary is one of the socialist countries which has been at the forefront both of discussions and of real attempts at alternative forms of economic integration. [...]
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The economic effects of communist rule in Eastern Europe have been studied mostly in terms of the impact of institutions on static economic efficiency, especially the interactions between annual planning and managing, and more recently, on the labor managed firm. These are interesting issues, but not those that are most important about the economic experiences of Albania, Bulgaria, Romania or even Yugoslavia since 1945. The short history of these less developed European economies under communist rule is dominated by rapid output growth and structural change. More recently crises in Yugoslavia and Romania since 1980 or 1981 and the sense of pending crisis in Bulgaria and Albania have caught our attention. After evident success in generating rapid development, all four are having trouble achieving economic maturity. [...]
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This paper presents a case study of the thread and cotton yarn factory Dalmatinka in Sinj, focusing on workers’ culture as the backbone of collective memory within the local community. Starting with the history of this industrial plant, through the elaboration of the concept of labor in the context of socialist Yugoslavia, the study identifies several narrative elements as the basis for the construction of workers’ memory. Based on their accounts, the relationship between workers and the factory is explored through the concepts of life history and life story and in relation to the construct of the socialist man. Following these conclusions, the paper concentrates on contemporary interpretations of Dalmatinka’s immaterial heritage. An analysis of a civil initiative project, aimed at reevaluating the factory’s contribution to town’s infrastructural, economic and cultural development, indicates a sustained presence of Dalmatinka in the collective memory.
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This article explores the highly heterogeneous social structure of female workers at two fish canneries: Kvarner on the island of Lošinj and Plavica on the island of Cres. The heterogenous workforce reflected certain characteristics of Yugoslav society. First, there was regional and ethnic diversity. Second, there were differences created by rapid modernization, especially between educated and uneducated women who possessed different types of knowledge and embodied different behavioral norms. The third set of differences between workers was based on a traditional patriarchal idea of female propriety which existed simultaneously alongside the socialist idea of a “working woman”. Lastly, the position of workers was also shaped through the tension between appreciation of industrial and physical labor in socialism and tourist imagination of the Adriatic coast. Workers’ narratives and the visual material testify to social hierarchies and differences, but also to negotiations of these positions and different affiliations, all of which depended on their various situations and interests. The stories from different factories also point to different possibilities of social relations, interactions and community building. While workers from Kvarner in Lošinj on occasions remained disintegrated, workers from Plavica on Cres traversed boundaries more easily and formed a close-knit network and community. This was due to the different working and living conditions in the two factories, including a policy of organized leisure and social events, which were a consequence of different periods in which the factories operated, different roles that they had in the local community and different factory management.
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The article discusses the social world formed around canneries in small coastal and insular towns in the northeastern Adriatic. Although associated with hard, unpleasant labor and demanding work conditions, the fish canning industry, particularly in the period of late socialism, offered a framework in which a meaningful social life was organized and lived. In this way, the local impact of canneries reached much beyond providing financial means to its employees. To understand the social meaning of fish canning in the Yugoslav Adriatic, the article focuses on the relationship between the now largely vanished local fish canning industry and tourism that is increasingly becoming the dominant (and the only) source of income for local communities. Lefebvre’s concept of rhythm-analysis proves to be a productive lens to view the complex and often ambiguous relationship between the two industries, and to narrate the history of fish canning through the senses – what was seen, heard, smelled, felt. These intense, embodied, sensorial memories caution us that the dominant claims and narratives which interpret the replacement of industry with tourism (and other tertiary sector activities) as a necessary, inevitable and desirable developmental step should not be taken for granted.
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The article deals with textile workers’ memories of a socialist factory and industrial work in Slovenia, and their experiences during numerous contemporary restructurings and social transformations. It argues that textile workers were heavily marked by the disintegration of their community and loss of social recognition. The loss of the factory was experienced as personal and social loss, the loss of dignity and self-worth. Such experiences are connected to historically shaped meanings of factories, the role and position of industrial workers in the past socialist landscape, with particular memories and experiences of work. The metanarrative of socialist industrialization depicted them as protagonists of modernization and social development. They were co-creators of the industrial miracle, local infrastructure and social standard. They now felt robbed and dispossessed in a material and symbolic sense. The society showed little interest in their experience of such a loss. The absence of research and little attention paid to such questions by the society is connected to the way in which the society dealt with economic restructuring in Slovenia. The local experience is compared with other post-socialist ethnographies and industrial worker ethnographies in the transformed capitalist world.
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The paper analyses the notion of alienation in a dual sense: first, as a significant articulation of philosophical and sociological problems in Yugoslav socialist thought and beyond, but also as a very present accentuation of the work conditions detected in industry. This double position builds a partial comparison with and analysis of the context of today’s working conditions in the “cognitariat” sector, but from which detection of alienation is almost completely removed and replaced with terms such as “hopelessness”, “indifference”, “futility”, “self-exploitation”, or “burnout”. The paper interprets the lack of such substitution, since alienation, despite the constantly emphasized abstractness of its meaning, connotes criticism, change and overcoming the current issues. This implies strong effort towards disalienation, which is not the case with the mentioned substitutive terms. For this reason, linguistic analysis and attempts to answer the question on the possibility of speaking and analysing a part of today’s, especially working, conditions in terms of alienation are a dominant part of this paper.
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The development of globalization processes poses new challenges to the countries of the world, primarily related to the gradual transition to the knowledge economy and its implementation in the face of today's challenges. On the one hand, the formation of the knowledge economy takes place in the context of globalization and liberalization of legislation, and on the other - this transition is accompanied by the desire of states to strengthen control over strategically important areas, including areas of intellectual potential. Expanding the possibilities of using intelligence as a basis for qualitative economic growth is becoming one of the key prerequisites for the success of the economy and assessing its leadership potential in these conditions. Changing the qualitative basis of economic development requires a rethinking of the role of intelligence in the management process, which, in turn, raises the issue of intellectual potential and the effectiveness of its implementation. The analysis of the structure of Ukraine's economy shows the urgent need for its qualitative restructuring, given the processes of global intellectualization of production.Significant intellectual resources accumulated in Ukraine, however, do not receive sufficient capitalization. Such indicators are the result of the lack of scientific and innovative spheres among the priorities of the state development, which is unacceptable in the conditions of transition to the knowledge economy and building an efficient economy. The intellectual potential of Ukraine is formed by many factors, including the scale and structure of training of specialists with higher education and research staff. The level of structure, structure and quality of scientific personnel training have the greatest influence on the level of technological readiness. Indicators also include: the network of organizations, their structure, level and structure of funding, the number and structure of scientific training, the number of researchers and their share in the structure of the labor market.
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The paper is devoted to the development of the potential of higher education in the territorial context as a tool for increasing the competitiveness of the region, in particularly the problems and prospects of the Kirovohrad region.In the paper the presence of a strong relationship between the number of students and gross regional product per capita is established. The analysis of changes of quantity the available population in Ukraine and Kirovohrad region in particular is carried out. It is established that the studied region is characterized by the migration reduction during 2015-2019 years. The movement of entrants from the Kirovohrad region is analyzed by the author, the main recipient-regions are identified. The dynamics of the average monthly wages of full-time employees in Ukraine and the Kirovohrad region in 2010-2019 years are analyzed and the share of large, medium, small and micro-enterprises in the selected regions in relation to the total number in Ukraine in 2010-2018 are analyzed. It was determined that the most negative factors which affect on the development of the potential of higher education in the regions are: demographic crisis, migration decline, low average monthly wages and low business activity in the region.It was revealed that the most effective tool for eliminating the negative tendencies in the development of the potential of higher education is the creation and support the development of innovative-oriented cluster structures, the purpose of which is to ensure the effective interaction of authorities, universities, business and society for the synergistic effect in the socio-economic development of the Kirovohrad region. In addition, creation the jobs positions with high added value; support the innovation infrastructure; support small and medium business; creation the attractive infrastructure for youth; encourage business to the scientific cooperation; promotion higher education and jobs positions in the Kirovohrad region; creation the effective system of postgraduate education and training; involvement the representatives of higher education institutions in the process of branding the region; initiation a regional educational exhibition "Kirovohrad Educational" are suggested by the author.
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The paper is devoted to the problem of research of the organizational and economic factors, which are affecting on the process of the social development of labour potential in Ukraine. The authors, based on the research of the foreign and Ukrainian scientists, determined the necessity to change the approach to the human resource management, caused by the transformations on the labour market and crisis phenomena in the economy. Social development of labour potential should play a key role in this process as a significant factor of ensuring the economic prosperity and social welfare.The main goal of the paper is to reveal the essence and pecularities of the process of social development of labour potential, to analyze the organizational and economic prerequisites for its forming by researching the founder of the indicators of the functioning of the labour market of Ukraine.The author determined that the social development of labour potential is due to the influence of social factors, leading to the forming of new opportunities for population, the growth and expansion of their capabilities, skills, competencies, changes in the qualitative state of their labour potential and the result of their social and labour activities.Using analysis and synthesis, induction and deduction, the methods of comparison and analytics, the main organizational and economic indicators of the development of labour potential of Ukraine are analyzed by the author. In particular, the indicators of fertility and mortality have been analyzed, and the age structure of the population has been determined. Also the characteristic of the domestic labour market, which is characterized by a decreasing in employment in the real sector of the economy, an increasing in unemployment and informal employment, a decreasing in the coverage of employees by the collective agreements, which are negatively impacts on the economic and social development of the state have been given. The indicators of growth of nominal and real wages have been determined, as well as a comparative analysis of wages in Ukraine and the world have been conducted.As a result of the conducted research, the author summarized the problematic issues that hold back the social development of labour potential and require the urgent solutions.
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The article reviews how the appearance of the “artificial narrow intelligence”, which is already a fact, will participate in the processes of the transformation, the disappearance of some jobs and the creation of others. The aim of the text is to reveal two scenarios: optimistic and pessimistic as well as the basic theses in the debate of these problems. The tasks of the article are to draw the chances and to warn for the risks at the same time that follow of the implementation of AI in different human realms. The methodology of the research includes: a comparative analysis, key trends tracking, building of two alternative scenario forecasts. The originality of the text contains in the concrete placement of the Narrow AI in the context of the transformation of one the key human activity as labor is.
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The review of: 1) Sven Cvek, Jasna Račić, Snježana Ivčić: Borovo u štrajku – rad u tranziciji 1987. — 1991., Zagreb: BRID, 2019., 225 str. 2) Nikica Barić: Split 1980-ih – društveni sukobi u sutonu samoupravnog socijalizma, Zagreb: Hrvatski institut za povijest, 2019., 863 str.
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The remittances or money transfers set by migrants to the country of origin are considered to be one of the welfare channels with a potential to influence macroeconomics indicators. The aim of our paper is to analyse migration and remittance behaviour of Ukrainian migrants in the context of the EU. Our study is based on the questionnaire survey inspired by similar projects in Latin America and Mexico. The paper’s main contribution and value-added is in the detailed analysis of the topic that distinguishes different forms of remittances using the statistical summary of the data. According to our findings, the probability and amount remitted are determined by demographic factors and the direction of effects differs in the case of regular and one-time payments. Altruism and business financing come through as the primary motives to remit. Ukrainian remittances appear to be transferred by informal channels into the productive forms of consumption. A procurement of skilled position is positively influenced by human capital factors but is also reflected in the labour market situation in the destination country.
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Youth out of foster care can face various problems related to finding a housing, unemployment, low educational attainment or lack of interpersonal relationships. The goal of the survey is to study the problems of aging out of foster care. Within the qualitative research semi-structured interviews were conducted. The findings indicated that youth out of foster care felt unprepared for life and face some financial, social and psychological challenges which make transitioning into adulthood even more difficult for them. They have a problem of unstable housing, employment and community integration. The study identified very low involvement of the social worker during preparation to age out of foster care. As youth age out of foster care, social workers are tasked to work collaboratively with them to develop a transition care strategy that meets their needs and helps to promotion them into independent living. It's recommended to expanded foster care services to the age of 21 years with the goals of increasing educational stability, housing stability, and employment services as youth transition to adulthood.
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This policy paper assesses Latvian inflation performance in an EU and Baltic states context and speculates on the overall prospects for the Latvian economy in the light of the emerging slowdown both in Latvia and elsewhere. On inflation it is likely that, in the absence of new major price shocks, the May 2008 figure represents the peak of the current inflation episode – the slowdown of the economy and thus the unwinding of the overheated labour market should ensure this. On the pace of disinflation, evidence from a simple Phillips curve analysis, together with the flexibility of the Latvian labour market, points in the direction of a fast disinflation, while evidence from other countries emphasises the persistence of inflation. However, the Phillips curve analysis also predicts that lower inflation will come at the cost of higher unemployment. Using two alternative decompositions of inflation the paper examines the balance between a common inflation component and country specific inflation for Latvia and the Baltic states as against the EU-27 and the EU new member states. We find that, irrespective of method used, Latvia has much the biggest domestic inflation component of the three Baltic states. A much more overheated labour market in Latvia and perhaps belated policy response are to blame for the worse performance in Latvia. On duration and depth of a recession in Latvia we use evidence from international experience which suggests that the cumulative loss from a recession might be the equivalent of up to two years of double digit GDP growth relative to trend. Instead of growing 10-11% as was the norm until 2008 Latvia may experience negative growth of perhaps minus 1% for up to two years. This loss of potential GDP is a major setback for the prospects of Latvian convergence.
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The period under review started in 2010, when the discussion of significant para¬metric changes in the pension system in Bulgaria began in order to improve it, resulting from the changed rates of economic growth, employment/unemployment, income, infla¬tion, parameters and trends of demographic processes and their impact on the social insurance system and ends in 2018, with the inclusion of the latest changes in pension legislation and the available statistics on an annual basis. The article aims to show how the changes in recent years concerning the access to a pension for insurance experience and age and the determination of its amount have affected the number, amount and costs of pensions for insurance experience and age for the period 2010 - 2018.
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Social work has little tradition as an academic discipline or as a profession in Albania despite the high need for well-trained social workers. Social work in Albania had practically not existed in the past, neither before the WWII nor during socialist regime. It was the deep political and economic changes of the post socialist phase and the support of government and non-government stakeholders, like the Ministry of Labour, Social Affairs, Emigration and Ex- Persecuted People as well as the Grand Valley University, Michigan, which paved the way for the establishment from scratch of the Faculty of Social Work at the University of Tirana in 1992. Two other schools of Social Work were also established in two public universities, one at the University of Shkodra (2005) and another at the Elbasan University (2004). The Albania’s adherence to the Bologna Declaration brought a new reform, initiated in 2005, in which the Departments of Social Work were actively involved and played a critical role to adjust the curricula according to the EU standards. However, social work is neither a straight forward academic discipline nor a clear-cut profession. Social work is both, above all it is the safety net of society. The concept of social work derives from the needs of society, which in the end turns towards social mobilization, participation and inclusion. The global definition of social work, set out by the International Federation of Social Workers (IFSW) and approved by its general assembly in 2014, defines Social Work as follows: “Social work is a practice-based profession and an academic discipline that promotes social change and development, social cohesion, and the empowerment and liberation of people. Principles of social justice, human rights, collective responsibility and respect for diversities are central to social work. Underpinned by theories of social work, social sciences, humanities and indigenous knowledge, social work engages people and structures to address life challenges and enhance wellbeing”. (http://www.communitycare.co.uk/what-is-the-roleof-social-workers).
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