Vývoj globálnej environmentálnej politiky – výskum a prax

Author(s): Roman Novotný,Viera Ivanková / Language(s): Slovak / Issue: 2/2017

The aim of this article is to give an overview of global environmental problems, outline the ways in which countries and people have tried to solve them and present some of the most important aspects of global environmental policy as part of its development. The influence that international relations scholars and global environmental policy scientists can have on policy-makers is also solved, with a primary focus on diffuse influence. Political and scientific measures and international regimes that have tried to solve certain environmental problems or tried to find a compromise between these measures are also mentioned.

Zdania odrębne w teorii polityki: Voegelina badanie symboli i Straussa poszukiwanie filozofa

Author(s): Michal Kuz / Language(s): English / Issue: 4/2016

The paper summarizes the nature of Eric Voegelin’s and Leo Strauss’s methodological approaches to the study of the history of political thought, in particular, the Western political thought. The paper concludes that in both cases the thinkers stray away from the mainstream, which is currently represented by contextualism. However, in their dissenting voices both authors take very different routes. Voegelin focuses on political symbols which are grounded in the metaphysical experience of their creators, and Strauss focuses on the perennial question of philosophy and classical, discursive rationality as the criterion of philosophical inquiry. They also differ in their opinions on the role of the political philosopher. For Voegelin, the philosopher is a defender or a co-creator of political creeds. For Strauss s/he is mainly the educator of politically savvy youths and, above all, the defender of philosophy as the most noble pursuit of the mind. The paper concludes by pointing out the importance and prominence of both thinkers.

Zpátky do budoucnosti: Kontrafaktuály a scénáře v bezpečnostním výzkumu plánování

Author(s): Jan Kofron / Language(s): Czech / Issue: 3/2015

Defense planning and research has to engage with questions about future developments quite often. Solutions to these questions tend to be hazy due to (I) the missing data, or due to (II) the necessity to build long-term prognoses, which are – by their very nature – only remotely related to any current or historical empirical cases. Under these conditions counterfactuals and their specific – futureoriented – form: scenarios, offer a valuable tool. Nevertheless, counterfactuals and scenarios, due to their limited empirical embeddedness, demand explicit and rigorous application of a theory. The article highlights often overlooked resemblance of scenarios and counterfactuals and derives from this fact some methodological implications for scenario building enterprise. Beyond that, it aims at demonstrating possible contributions as well as obstacles inherent for the use of scenarios and counterfactuals in our defense policy debates.

Балканските държави и индекс на демокрация (2017)

Author(s): Blaga Blagoeva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3/2019

The paper analyses the results from the Economist Intelligence Unit’s research for Democracy Index 2017. It starts by offering a general presentation of the research and focuses specifically on the results of Bulgaria and other Balkan countries on several major criteria: Electoral process and pluralism; Functioning of government; Political participation; Political culture; Civil liberties. The paper seeks to answer the question why there aren’t “Full Democracies” in the Balkans?

Биовластта днес

Author(s): Paul Rabinow,Nikolas Rose / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2016

Гендерная политология в России: достижения, проблемы и перпективы

Author(s): Tatjana Borisovna Riabova,O. G. Ovcharova / Language(s): Russian / Issue: 1/2016

The paper examines the set of research problems in contemporary Russian Gender Studies in Political Sciences, the current status and perspectives of developing this research field in Russia. The authors dwell upon gender methodology in Political Sciences and an alyze main Russian scholars’ research areas in the field: gender in political attitudes and behavior in Russia and abroad, gender in Russian political processes, woman movement and feminism, influence of gender on Russian politics, gender asymmetry, gender aspects of nationalism and geopolitics.

Дилеме традиционалне дијалектичке дихотомије политичких партија на левицу и десницу у савременом друштву

Author(s): Uroš V. Šuvakovic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 4/2010

The reasons for impossibility of continuance of the traditional dialectic dichotomy of political parties to the left and the right in contemporary society and the necessity of its overgrowing to classification are methodologically discussed here. Temporal and geographical character is pointed out of the ideas of the party left and the party right. It is also pointed out that in the case of classification also, regardless the number of members, the principle of consistency is disturbed, since the dividing criterion has been changed during the history, but also the criteria of completeness, exhaustiness, reciprocal exclusion of groups at the same level and enough capability for discrimination, which all must be fulfilled with methodologically correctly implemented classifications. In the 21st century it is necessary perform again recognition of political ideas and practical operation of political parties and name them by the name that really expresses their substantive features.

До проблеми вдосконалення механізмів урегулювання політичних конфліктів

Author(s): Tetyana I. Marmazova / Language(s): Ukrainian / Issue: 1/2011

The main problem of improving the mechanism for resolving political conflicts – the policy of mutual concessions, the means to ensure stability, use of controlled communication and others.

Държавата КТБ

Author(s): Zornitsa Markova,Tatyana Puncheva- Vassileva,Nikolay Stoyanov,Rosen Bosev,Ilin Stanev,Ani Kodzhaivanova,Desislava Leshtarska / Language(s): Bulgarian / Publication Year: 2017

This book is the result of a two-year journalistic investigation that traces the history of Corporate Commercial Bank from its origin to its bankruptcy (1994-2014). The investigation was conducted on the basis of dozens of meetings with direct participants or witnesses of the events, representatives of state structures, political parties, business, regulators. In the process, hundreds of official and informal documents have been analyzed. Access to information by Bulgarian and international organizations has been requested many times. The collected facts, data, documents, and exclusive testimonies included in this book contain for the first time conclusive evidence of political corruption in Bulgaria. The aim of the KTBfiles project is to show the genesis of the "CCB model" (Corporate Commercial Bank model) and the technology of its expansion to magnitude, which pressed all key state institutions to the wall. The book explores the circumstances that made this vicious model possible, as well as the mechanisms for its eradication. This makes the investigation much more comprehensive, multi-layered and important than the chronology of bank bankruptcy, whether it is the largest in Bulgarian history. This qualitative journalistic investigation answers not only to the question #WHO but also to the questions how, why and especially what follows if we stop asking and live permanently with civil indifference and cynicism.

Електоральна поведінка у когнітивно-орієнтованих наукових дослідженнях

Author(s): Olga V. Kosakhivska / Language(s): Ukrainian / Issue: 2/2011

The article analyzes the basic methodological principles and tactics, and Theoretical concept of cognitive approach to the study of electoral behavior, which is best obruntovuye position that the nature and direction of the electoral process in countries which are transformed, mainly depends on the personal qualities of its participants and their ability to assess tourists' objective political reality.

Изкушен? Относно обвързването на Фуко с неолиберализма. Коментар върху неотдавнашната „теза за съблазняването“

Author(s): Magnus Paulsen Hansen / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2016

The essay questions the recent wave of authors claiming that Foucault became ‘seduced’ by neoliberal thought and ended up endorsing it. It does so by a thorough examination of two books that makes the claim, but with radically different explanations for the fact that Foucault engaged himself with neoliberalism. By analyzing the textual ‘evidence’ of the proponents of the ‘seduction theses’ the essay shows that its premises are rather flawed. Firstly, the lack of normative denunciations in Foucault’s writing on neoliberalism cannot be taken as an endorsement, but as integral to a specific way of conducting ‘non-normative critique (Hansen 2016). Secondly, Foucault’s supposedly anti-statist position is questionable when one reads his lectures carefully. In fact, Foucault’s explicitly distanced himself an “inflationary” critique of the state, identifiable on the extreme left as well as in neoliberal thought.

Канализиране и кодиране: понятието „среда“ в лекциите на Фуко върху управляемостта

Author(s): Thomas Lemke / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 3-4/2016

This article seeks to analyze the significance and the dimensions of the notion of “milieu” in Foucault’s lectures on governmentality at the Collège de France. After reconstructing Foucault’s brief genealogy of the term, I will put forward two arguments. First, I will show that the “milieu” constitutes a strategic element in the emergence of a liberal governmentality in the 18th century. Secondly, I will argue that mobilizing the “milieu” not only enables the government of humans but also makes possible a “government of things” (Foucault) that addresses complexes or assemblages of humans and non-humans.

КОНЦЕПЦІЯ ЕЛЕКТРОННОЇ ДЕМОКРАТІЇ

Author(s): V. K. Lurie / Language(s): Ukrainian / Issue: 2/2017

The article describes the concept of e-democracy and analyzes the prospects and obstacles to its realization. In the article stated that the development of communication technologies contributed to the formation of global information space, which includes political, economic, social and cultural institutions and as media plays a significant role in the restructuring of socio-political reality, the e-democracy is definitely the subject that should be analyzed. The relevance of the article is to study the phenomenon of e-democracy, its forms, as well as the prospects and constraints that exist on the way of its realization. In the text there are named different multiple prerequisites for e-democracy implementation. Among some of them are: the lack of qualified management decisions and as a result the necessity to adopt new ways of decision-making; increasing levels of political participation as nowadays a significant power relies not only on state authorities, but also on civil society (as a result, in order to increase the activity of citizens in social and political life of the country it is necessary to introduce new mechanisms of policy-making); the opportunity for the citizens to make real actions at different levels as e-democracy is not confined to voting via the Internet.Also in the article there is a given classification of e-democracy (open-source democracy, e-government, semi-direct democracy, e-consultations, computer lobbying) and its features (publicity, collectivity, assessment by the population the quality of work of the authorities). The article indicates the stages of development of informational and communicational cooperation between the authorities and the population. Moreover, the problems of implementation of e-democracy are also analyzed. Among named are: legal regulation problems (while implementing e-democracy, the question of Internet control by authorities arises), necessity of political and moral problems solution (there is definitely the risk of «black» technologies usage), technical problems (unfortunately, not every citizen of our country has a possibility to find Internet access). In the conclusion, it is stated thatedemocracy promotes transparency of activities of public authorities through the usage of modern technologies and providing citizens access to information. It is said that e-democracy is a tool supporting the political activities and ensuring greater transparency and accountability of politicians to the electorate. Finally, it is stated that e-democracy is a tool to improve the quality of high-rank decisions relating to how each individual and society as a whole participate in the political process.

Корпоративни односи с јавношћу у институцијама (нео) либералне и социјалне државе

Author(s): Dragan Subotic´ / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 4/2010

In the paper author wrote on corporative public relations in institutions of (neo)liberal and social states, paying special attention to the notion, structure and functions within theoretical-methodological approach in, for example, the works of Jurgen Habermas, Luckman and other relevant authors in this field. In a dilemma regarding (neo)liberal and welfare state the author supports a social welfare state model, taking into account its all positive and negative consequences. Through an analysis of a model of corporative public relations, the author shows that essentially he supports the (neo)liberal state concept, in particular the ideas of Milton Friedman and other proponents of the monetary school in business economy, politics and more broadly in whole society. The corporative public relations are indeed a socio- economic and political indicator of possible modern state model in 21st century which after all, considering globalization of the world law, economy and politics, is going to be based on innovations, knowledge and communications or information society. Therefore the corporative public relations in the state institutions are the indicator of a social, political and economic character of a society, especially in case of a transitional society.

Критиката като комуникативен и властови фактор

Author(s): Mariana Pencheva / Language(s): Bulgarian / Issue: 1/2015

Criticism and critical approach combines ideas coming from humanism, enlightenment, philosophy of life. In our contemporary critical thinking is what distinguishes a sane person of ordinary user of information. Quality of life is determined by the quality of thinking, and it is the basis of the quality of questions that we ask. Critical thinking is an important communicative and power factor in many areas of the society, in order reads. The more conscious personality is, the more likely it is to take the right decisions for yourself.

МЕТОДОЛОГИЈА МЕРЕЊА МЕКЕ МОЋИ: НОВИ ПРИСТУП

Author(s): Nikola M. Kosovic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 4/2015

This paper suggests a new methodological approach to measuring the amount of soft power a country has at its disposal. This approach investigates the origins, contemporary manifestations and perspectives of soft power in bilateral international relations. The article begins with a thorough discussion about the theoretical background behind the concept of soft power and currently existing methodological approaches to its measuring. The author states that the term “soft power”, which is becoming ever more popular in political science and international relations, was first mentioned in 1990 by Joseph S. Nye, who later defined it as the ability to influence the behavior of others to get the desired outcomes not by using force, coercion or payment, but through attractiveness. Nye also determined three main sources of a country’s soft power: its culture, political values and foreign policies, but, as argued in this paper, neither Nye nor any other author has provided any methodological instructions on how to quantitatively measure the amount of this resource a country has at its disposal, which is a major drawback of this concept. In order to provide evidence for this point, the author proceeds with an in-depth overview of existing literature, reflecting on the most well-known indexes and researches, and pointing out to their strengths and weaknesses, as well as a serious lack of practical use for policy makers. The next part of this article is dedicated to explaining and arguing for a new methodological approach to observing and quantifying soft power in international relations. The author’s main argument is that the hallmark of soft power is not uniformity of application, but its variation. In practice, this means that some elements of soft power that are useful for Russia in its relations with Belarus, or for USA in Mexico, might not be equally effective between Russia and Ukraine and USA and Canada. Therefore, the investigation and measurement of sources of one country’s soft power should be conducted on a case-by-case basis by observing specific elements of soft power and their concrete application in bilateral relations. In other words, to be able to give firmly grounded policy recommendations, one needs to know the answer to a key question – what matters for members of a particular society. Ideally, this can be achieved through conducting an opinion poll among the citizens of the country of interest. This opinion poll should address all three aspects of soft power, as defined by Nye. Since all of these aspects can be further divided into separate sub-elements, the questions should ideally address all of them. The dependent variable in this research would be the people’s opinion about a certain country (whether it is favorable or unfavorable), while the independent ones would concern different elements of soft power. Depending on the obtained data, methods that could be used to analyze them would be either an optimal regression model, or a chi-square test, which would assess the influence of different soft power elements on determining the opinion about other countries. The final part of the paper is dedicated to the possible application of this methodology in a case study of the Russian soft power capabilities in Serbia. The author provides arguments that Russia is the most popular country among Serbian citizens, although due to many facts this might seem a bit odd. Therefore, the argument goes, this case is an interesting one to research since this means that there are elements of the Russian soft power that matter to Serbs more than what could be expected to negatively influence the image of Russia in this country. The author then provides a clear overview of this research and instructions about what the structure and the contents of the questionnaire that could be used in this research should look like in order to answer the key research question of why Russia is so popular among the citizens of Serbia.

МЕТОДОЛОГІЯ І ПРАКСЕОЛОГІЯ ДОСЛІДЖЕНЬ ПОЛІТИЧНИХ ПРОЦЕСІВ

Author(s): Liudmyla Mykolaivna Herasina / Language(s): Ukrainian / Issue: 2/2017

The theoretical methodological analysis of political processes in this article allows probing their nature, specific and practices of development. A political process can be interpreted as a system action of all of subjects and objects of policy for realization of public power; activity related to forming, development, transformations and functioning of the political system.The greatest cognitive potential is contained by the paradigms of institutionalism, structurally functional, behaviorism and theory of «rational choice». Institutional approach in political discourse presents the political institutes as dominant «system of co-ordinates» in development of political process. Structurally functional methodology accents attention on an underlying structure and functions of the political system, on the role of social environment in a process. A political process in the theory of «rational choice» is often described as a «public choice», or as certain variations of «scenarios of games». This methodology has wide application: for the estimation of operating international relations and their prospects; to the prognosis of parliamentary activity of factions from forming of coalition, political blocks or groups; at the analysis of electoral conduct of citizens. Prakseology of political processes most expressly demonstrate them scientific typology’s, which was carried out scientists on the base of different criteria. For a scale, allocate the political processes of macro-level, which characterize political development at level held or regions of planet (historical, global; western and «unwestern»; evolutional, revolutionary). Processes micro-level are concrete political events, daily relations of different subjects politicians, which are related to practical realization of individual, group or corporate interests (political co-operation is in a government, parliament, parties, regions of country, structures of local-authority). When a democratic political culture consists in basis of political co-operation of subjects, in society the horizontally organized process is formed on the base of principles of consocial democracy; when a policy is based on a netatism and authoritarian culture, there is the a peak organized political process. Political processes in the post of totalitarian states of Eurasia, Central and East Europe, which Ukraine belongs to, is extremely contradictory – is investigation of the transitional state of society; presence of political subcultures; dysfunctions of institutes of«hybrid» democracy; instabilities of the party and electoral systems; oligarchic of economy; property differentiation of population; corruptions and braking of reforms.A world political process of contemporaneity is a computer-integrated, global process, which represents the various activities of nation-states and those legitimate organs, international organizations and motions (world or continental scale); it – political activity of all of subjects of international relations is consolidated. The specific of world political process is that here the unique, legitimate «center of compulsion» absents with the proper political legal jurisdiction. Consequently, the problem of «balance of powers and interests» acquires ponderability, as a factor of stability (or instabilities) of worldwide policy is important. This process characterizes: variety of political development and different social and political forces; special methods of realization of world power; difficult aggregate of civilization, transnational and peripheral, regional, national and local political processes.Thus, progressive evolution of the civilized people and countries directed anymore on the construction of the democratic, legal state on the base of political pluralism, rights and freedoms of man, developed national economy and culture, high level of welfare and social defense of citizens.

Мониторинг и оценка на публични политики и програми

Author(s): Andrey Nonchev / Language(s): Bulgarian / Publication Year: 2009

The report entitled Monitoring and Assessment of Public Policies and Programmes (available in Bulgarian only) reviews the methods for monitoring the activity of the public sector, central and regional authorities and public-private partnerships. The systematic and thorough use of integrated tools for the monitoring and evaluation of public policies and programs is yet to become the normin Bulgaria. He underestimating of the importance of these practices is one of the reasons for the relatively low level of preparedness of the country in adjusting to the requirements and challenges of EU membership. The lack of monitoring and evaluation of public policies and programs leads to many problems, e.g. related to the mismanagement of EU pre-accession and structural funds, the implementation of the harmonized European legislation, the capacity of the Bulgarian administration. In this context, the knowledge and use of these methods and techniques is a prerequisite for sound, effective and accountable governance. They are also needed for increased public participation and involvement of all stakeholders in the development, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of public policies and programs.

Моралне норме и грађанско право са освртом на права проналазача

Author(s): Nina Planojevic´,Siniša Varga / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 2/2011

Subject of the paper is an analysis of methods of civil law - moral adjustment. The emphasis is on the method where legal norm prescribes obligation to act in pursuance of moral. The aim of authors is to point out on problems which may arise in the application of this kind of legal norms, mostly in regard to contents of moral cognition. For example in Patent Act is laid down that inventions are excluded from patentability if their publication or exploitation would be contrary to (order public or) morality. Starting from the fact that biotech inventions are principally exposed to ethical estimation, authors represent a number of reasons against such kind of legal regulation, concluding that it is not usable in every part of law, particularly in patent law. It is especially because immoral invention can be commercially exploited anyway. Because of that, their proposal is to take out ethical estimation of existing invention on the basis of the legal norm that contains assignment onto moral norm, but to introduce the taking moral norms over into legal ones for the purpose of regulation of processes of (scientific) research which precede to origination of inventions.

Наслеђа оспораване институције. Ка разумевању идеолошких и политичких импликација научних теорија о настанку, функционисању и друштвеним последицама задруге

Author(s): Slobodan Naumovic,Zorica Ivanovic / Language(s): Serbian / Issue: 2/2018

In this text we start from a general question – why is it that certain research topics and problems, like the zadruga, arouse scholarly interest in particular ways – in order to confront a more narowlly focused one – what is it, exactly, that a given social scientist communicates in her or his particular writings about the institution of the zadruga, apart from what seems to be obvious in the disciplinary sense? Speaking in Bourdieu’s terms, we address the question of ce que parler veut dire in the academic contexts of family history and family typology (Bourdieu 1982). Here, though, the task is not so much the tracing of the relationship between the socially sanctionned positions of those who utter public statements and the performativity of their utterances in the social field. Rather, the accent is on the polivalence of academic speech on the zadruga, on its possibility to speak in two, three, or more “registers”, on the ideological and political sous-entendus of such utterances, on the multiplicity of possible readings (and misreadings) of such pronouncements, and on the eventual political outcomes of such scholarly hermeneutical cycles (Shklar 2004). On the way, we intend to attack one of the central questions of the project – what exactly constitutes the conceptual, ideological and political legacies of scholarly reflections on the institution that used to be termed as the zadruga? In doing so, we are going to leave aside the problems that generally attract more scholarly attention – the many ways in which the zadruga, seen as one of the key local social institutions, was instrumentalised in the spheres of political communication and action in the region of the Balkans (Naumović 2009), topics on which the reader will find more in some of the fine texts resulting from the project (see, for example, Stojanović 2017). We also put aside scholarly issues regarding family history, family typologies, as well as terminological problems per se. We are interested in probing the reasons out of which the great historian Maria Todorova believed that “any myth can be used as the ‘scientific’ argument for an ideology (Todorova 1989, 12),” and that the zadruga “is an ideal subject for the creation and perpetuation of a myth (Todorova 1989, 11).” In a nutshell, we will be addressing what would have been, some time ago, termed as the “poetics and politics” (Clifford and Marcus, eds., 1986; Naumović 2000) of scholarly reflection on the zadruga.