Around the Bloc: Azerbaijan Rights Advocate Freed Ahead of President's U.S. Visit
Baku’s supreme court reduces lawyer Intigam Aliev's prison term to probation ahead of President Ilham Aliyev’s Washington visit.
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Baku’s supreme court reduces lawyer Intigam Aliev's prison term to probation ahead of President Ilham Aliyev’s Washington visit.
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Mehr vielleicht als anderswo ist die Geschichte ein Teil der politischen Kultur der Völker Mittel- und Osteuropas. Sie drücken ihre 'politischen Anschauungen gerne mit Hilfe historischer Beispiele oder durch Geschichtsmythen aus. Es war das romantische Denken mit seinen Geschichtsmythen, das an der Wende vom 18. zum 19. Jahrhundert die politische Kultur dieser Völker formte. Dieses Denken bietet den beträchtlichen Vorteil, komplizierte politische Gedankengänge auf eine Weise zu vermitteln, so daß sie selbst für ungeschulte Menschen erfaßbar werden. Darüber hinaus birgt die ästhetisierende Umsetzung der Geschichte in dieser Form auch eine motivierende Kraft in sich, gegen die ein nüchterner politischer Diskurs kaum anzukommen vermag.
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Es ist November 1991. Vor zwei Jahren gingen die Stürme der Revolution über die Länder Ost- und Südosteuropas hinweg und fegten die sattsam bekannte Nomenklatura-Herrschaft von der Bildfläche. Die tiefhängenden Wolken der Welt Breschnews, in der stumpfsinnige Unterwerfung und tristes Elend an der Tagesordnung waren, rissen auf und gaben den Blick auf einen offenen Himmel frei. Doch heute, zwei Jahre später, ist nicht etwa alles in Ordnung. Die Entdeckung daß viele der alten Parteifunktionäre noch immer auf ihrem Posten sitzen und es sogar geschafft haben, ihr Mäntelchen sofort nach dem Wind zu hängen, um sich unersetzlich zu machen, gehört sogar noch zu den geringsten Sorgen. Die Führer der Revolution, die sich früher in ihrem Ziel einig waren, sind miteinander in Streit geraten; Solidarität verkehrte sich in Zwist, das Forum in eine Arena. Staatsbürger, die gerade erst das Wahlrecht wiedererrungen haben, halten dessen Ausübung plötzlich für müßig und begeben sich in so geringer Zahl zu den Urnen, daß sie nicht einmal ein bescheidenes Quorum zustandebringen. Die wirtschaftliche Lage verschlechtert sich so sehr, daß das A ncien Regime für viele den Glorienschein der »guten alten Zeit« annimmt. Statt einer civil society, die triumphierend vor uns ersteht, verführen archaische Stammesbindungen selbsternannte Wortführer zu einem bedrohlichen Hervorkehren von Homogenität. Allgemeine Staatsbürgerrechte, die Unterschiede und Heterogenität anerkennen, bleiben dabei auf der Strecke. Fast überall liegt Gewalt in der Luft.
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Warum haben sich die Polen nie mit dem kommunistischen System identifiziert, sondern es von Anfang an als fremd, feindlich und widerrechtlich empfunden? Sicherlich hat die Herkunft des Systems selbst eine gewisse Rolle gespielt: Es wurde mit den Bajonetten der Roten Armee ins Land gebracht. Andere Faktoren waren zweifellos die Zerschlagung des Privateigentums und des freien Unternehmertums sowie die wachsenden wirtschaftlichen Schwierigkeiten. Der Hauptfaktor aber war die Religion: Denn im Endeffekt ist es der Kirche zu verdanken, daß der Kommunismus in seinen Grundlagen von nahezu der gesamten Nation abgelehnt wurde. Man konnte sich nicht mit einem System identifizieren, das den ,Glauben bekämpfte, Atheismus und Materialismus verkündete und darüber hinaus durch künstlich entfachten »Klassenkampf« die Gesellschaft in ständige Unruhe versetzte. Die Situation in Polen unterschied sich in dieser Hinsicht wesentlich von jener in anderen Ländern des sowjetischen Blocks. Wo es an religiösem Widerstand mangelte, reichten die Wurzeln des sowjetischen Kommunismus tiefer und wird es länger dauern, bis sie absterben.
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Living in a complex country such as Bosnia and Herzegovina, where politicians are one of the most influential people, we shall try to make analysis of those politicians’ media statements, but from the linguistic point of view. e emphasis will be put on the usage of discourse markers in the statements in which politicians commented demonstrations held in all bigger cities in February, 2014. We shall also make the comparison with the markers used in the political discourse of the English speaking area. e introductory part will give theoretical hypotheses on the usage of discourse markers in Croatian and English, their function and the basic purpose. We shall try to prove that they are used very often in the political discourse in order to draw attention of collocutors to what they want to say or point out. e final chapters will give the statistical analysis of the mentioned markers usage and authors’ conclusions about which markers were used the most by BiH politicians, did they use them more or less than politicians from the English speaking area and did they manage to draw attention of demonstrators and other people who followed their statements in the media.
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The naming and renaming of public places/spaces has been playing a substantial role in relation to cultural, political symbols. A process of renaming public squares and streets has arisen in Hungary during recent years, akin to the political changes of 1989-1990. This process is primarily generated by right-wing parties, seeking connections with the conservative historical ideology of the period preceding the Second World War. It can also be seen as a process of eliminating the remains of socialism. After the change in government, for various reasons, a removal of “surviving” persons or concepts began. The current renaming process also symbolizes the economic, political and cultural preferences of the new establishment. After changes in the law after the governmental elections of 2010, new legal regulations provided the local authorities with the opportunity to request expert opinions from the Hungarian Academy of Sciences to determine if a denomination can stay or if should it disappear.
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Soldiers under a strict new dress code will no longer be permitted to have long hair, visible tattoos, body piercings or smoke in public.
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2015 m. Lietuvoje buvo vykdyta 7-oji Europos socialinio tyrimo (EST, angl. European Social Survey, ESS) banga, kurioje tirtas Lietuvos gyventojų požiūris į sveikatos apsaugos sistemą, vertinta jų sveikatos būklė ir gyvensena, taip pat daug dėmesio skirta požiūriams į imigrantus ir imigraciją. Reprezentatyvioje Lietuvos gyventojų apklausoje dalyvavo 2250 respondentų.
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The article deals with the nature of obligations toward alleviation of state of poverty. Starting points in the analysis are Kant’s distinction between perfect and imperfect duties and reinterpretation of the distionction in Onora O’Neill’s ethics of obligations. Obligations toward alleviation of poverty are generally considered as imperfect, because it is impossible to specify correlative right to goods and services we are obliged to provide to the poor. For this reason, these obligations are clasiified as a part of ethics of virtues, not ethics of rights. According to this view, conditions of implementation are inherent part of justification of obligation. This interpretation of conditions of implementation is rejected and relaxed in theories of Thomas Pogge and Amarya Sen. According to author of the article, flaws in the architecure of analysed theories, as well as, undeveloped insights of their authors suggest that the best way to articulate obligations toward alleviation of povery is to understand them as indirect perfect obligations.
More...O liberalnom i republikanskom shvatanju pojma slobode
In this paper we will examine the difference between liberal and republican concepts of freedom. The proponents of republican view think that the third concept of freedom should be introduced in addition to negative and positive concepts of freedom. This third concept implies freedom as nondomination. Just as the liberal theorists think that there is a priority of negative over positive freedom, the republican theorists argue that there is a priority of nondomination over negative freedom. Since, the republican theorists defend the introduction of freedom as nondomination not only on normative, but also on conceptual grounds, our primary aim in this paper will be to investigate whether this notion has some analytical advantages over the concept of negative freedom.
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Many democracies in an early stage of development, such as Nigeria, experience a period of endemic corruption and difficulty providing needed public services. the careful use of algorithms may be of use in healping new democracies transition to a more objective, equitable, and accountable from of governance, through technology shoul not be viwed as a panacea for structural problems or without challenges of its own.
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In the contemporary world, the development of education is given special importance. Education is considered as a basic force of civilization changes. Interdisciplinary education, focused on innovation, is seen as a necessary challenge to cultural changes. Th e level of education is becoming an increasingly important factor in determining the economic, political and social behaviour as well as values shaping systems.
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The article deals with the concept of community organizing. The concept is first explained from the theoretical point of view, in terms of political (civil) participation as a key prerequisite of substantive democracy and in context of its crisis, both in old democracies and post-communist societies. Later it is considered as practice in its birthplace, in the American context, where community organizing is remarkably popular and effective. Subsequently, the article is focusing on research the possibility of using this concept in post-communist context, especially in the Slovak society. It shows that the lack of structural base (vibrant civil society in particular) and political legacy of authoritarianism are the main inhibitory factors in the development of civic political culture, which is the key sociocultural prerequisite of political participation, and consequently of community organizing.
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The present work deals with the research of the issues of political communication in Romania. This paper increase the visibility of the issues of the missing or unevolved sphere of “political Public” in Romania and aims to raise awareness about how the public sphere was dissolved by the communist regime and his installation of ”propagandistic public”. Afterwards were the deriving problems from it for the political communication in Romanian post-communism examined.
More...Politikai tapasztalat és karrierambíciók az Európai Parlamentben
The article investigates the career paths of Central European Members of the European Parliament. Based on the analysis of biographies and the results of a quantitative survey research about career ambitions with MEPs from the Czech Republic, Hungary, Poland, Slovakia and Slovenia, the paper both outlines the career paths that lead to the European Parliament and the perspectives for a career after the EP mandate. The research proves that the Central European MEPs are more strongly linked to national politics than the MEPs of the EU-15, and they are even more embedded in their country of origin than the MEPs of the fi rst directly elected EP were in 1979. However, local politics is a much less frequent recruitment base for future MEPs in Central Europe than in the ”old Member States”. The political experience and career ambitions of Central European MEPs prove the popular myth wrong, according to which the European Parliament is essentially a retirement home for politicians who have no future political goals. The development of a supranational elite has started in all fi ve countries between 2004 and 2014. The majority of Central European MEPs plan further career steps at European or national level, and only approximately one third of them can be considered as ”European pensioners”.
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Citizens interacting with electronic government websites are keen on the privacy of their information and the security of their data. Providing personal and critical information to e-government websites without any guarantee from the government side to protect such information and use is a risky action. Citizens need to be aware that their information is protected and never misused by their governments. This paper tried to develop a checklist to measure the degree of government websites’ adherence to the measures of privacy protection. Publishing a privacy policy can be a first step in guaranteeing users’ privacy in addition to other factors needed to reach the required level of protection by international bodies and agencies. The literature and international reports were explored to understand the issues related to privacy policy in e-government and their importance to users. Finally, a test, of a selected set of countries using the specified checklist, was conducted, where results were contrasted to their achievements on the e-government development index.
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