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The phenomena of radicalisation today develop and change at high speed, with their extreme forms manifested globally. The destructive dimensions of (violent) Islamist or right-wing radicalisation have become dramatically visible in Europe posing serious challenges to European societies at large. This report aims to address a knowledge gap with regard to how and to what extent internationally observed radicalisation processes are manifested in Bulgaria. Four different forms of radicalisation are investigated, including Islamist radicalisation, right-wing and left-wing radicalisation, as well as football hooliganism. The report provides policy makers and the expert community with a systematic overview of the main risks to which the Bulgarian society is exposed, as well as of the main actors and ideas, the repertoire of actions and the groups at risk associated with radicalisation. The report outlines recommendations for improvement of the policy and institutional response with regard to radicalisation by way of monitoring and prevention measures as well as multi agency collaboration and community engagement.
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The phenomena of radicalisation today develop and change at high speed, with their extreme forms manifested globally. The destructive dimensions of (violent) Islamist or right-wing radicalisation have become dramatically visible in Europe posing serious challenges to European societies at large. This report aims to address a knowledge gap with regard to how and to what extent internationally observed radicalisation processes are manifested in Bulgaria. Four different forms of radicalisation are investigated, including Islamist radicalisation, right-wing and left-wing radicalisation, as well as football hooliganism. The report provides policy makers and the expert community with a systematic overview of the main risks to which the Bulgarian society is exposed, as well as of the main actors and ideas, the repertoire of actions and the groups at risk associated with radicalisation. The report outlines recommendations for improvement of the policy and institutional response with regard to radicalisation by way of monitoring and prevention measures as well as multi agency collaboration and community engagement.
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Extortion racketeering has been long pointed out as the defining activity of organised crime. Although in recent years this crime has not been among the top listed organised crime threats in the strategic EU policy documents, it still remains ever present in European countries. The seriousness of the phenomenon has been recognised at the EU level and the crime has been listed in a number of EU legal acts in the field of police and judicial cooperation in criminal matters. The report Extortion racketeering in the EU: vulnerability factors analyses extortion racketeering forms and practices in six EU member states. The analysis disentangles the risk and the vulnerability factors for enterprises in two business sectors – agriculture and hospitality – as well as in the Chinese communities. Drawing on the results of the analysis, the report suggests new policies for tackling extortion racketeering in the EU. This report has been produced with the joint efforts of the Center for the Study of Democracy, Instituto de Ciencias Forenses y de la Seguridad – Universidad Autónoma de Madrid, Transcrime – Università Cattolica del Sacro Cuore di Milano and Vitosha Research and with the support of Guardia Civil in Spain.
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Radicalisation processes impacting on disaffected and indoctrinated persons and the later involvement of some of them in acts of terrorism are of growing concern for European citizens, their governments and the wider international community. Addressing this threat requires effective prevention policies which some EU member states have been proactive in developing. Effective policies need reliable diagnostic tools designed to identify individuals and groups who might pose a threat. The publication provides a review of existing approaches and tools to identifying, monitoring and assessing radicalisation in Europe and beyond. It further offers a conceptual framework of radicalisation risk and vulnerability indicators and their interpretation as a basis for developing early-warning mechanisms for frontline practitioners in countries which are yet to develop specific prevention and counter-radicalisation policies. The target group of the guide are policymakers at national and EU levels, as well as practitioners directly involved in the prevention of radicalisation in Central and Eastern Europe and beyond.
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Violent extremism is one of the major challenges Europe is currently facing. The threat is both external as well as internal as indicated by the rise in home-grown Islamist terrorists, as well as of nationalistic and anti-immigrant movements and far-right aggression. An accurate picture of the spread, nature and trends in the extremist and terrorist activity and actors is paramount to formulating strategic policy approaches and effectively allocating available resources. This publication provides a methodological framework for the establishment of a viable mechanism for monitoring and assessment of the state and developments over time in extremist acts and actors on the national level. The situational assessment is an instrument for systematic collection and analysis of statistical data, open source data and intelligence information pertaining to extremist actors and activities, for the purposes of developing regular situational reports of the spread, nature and trends in extremism and violent radicalisms. Following the application of the situational assessment tool, the publication presents main findings on extremist trends and monitoring capacities in three countries from Central and Southeast Europe: Bulgaria, the Czech Republic and Greece.
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Iz ove vremenske perspektive odbrana Gradske galerije čita se kao podvig ogromnih razmjera koji zaslužuje određeni spomenik, tj. simbol šireg društvenog značaja nad kojim je moguće prisjećati se te velike i značajne bitke. [...]
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Lviv (Ukraine) is an Eastern European city with a history dating back to the 13th century. It could be imagined as a palimpsest-like place of different architectural, social, and cultural heritages. However, the majority of current Lviv’s population lives within an urban environment designed and constructed during the second half of 20th century. Based on sociological data (in-depth semi-structured interviews, survey, and unobtrusive observation) article reviews the specifics of places for community in the largest mass housing estate – Sykhiv. Author shows what areas are perceived by inhabitants as the locations for social life and what types of social cohesion could contribute to the urban transformations.
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The most difficult subject that many politicians evade, as well as the people at large, are the problems of young people today. The problem of drug consumption presents the greatest danger of all. My personal belief as regards this is simple and clear. I’m not like the “others” who “don’t know” or “don’t see” what is going on with young people. I don’t take it as a taboo subject and don’t run away from it. In the following, I want to explain that the use of narcotics by young people brings about their ruin, as well as that of the society as a whole and, finally, of the state in which drug addiction is of a mass scale.
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After the dissolution of the USSR, Russian cities are popular destinations of labor migrants from the former Soviet republics, especially Central Asia and the Caucasus. One can observe a monopolization of particular sectors in the labor market and entire branches of petty trade by different ethnic and national communities. At some open-air markets, it is now the Russians who comprise the minority. Markets constitute a borderland which appears in the middle of a city – they serve as an important meeting place of people and cultures. The appearance of so-called ethnic entrepreneurship, ethnic economy and trade minorities, ethnic or otherwise, has been widely investigated in various parts of the world and in different times. It was, however, questioned whether one can speak about their existence in post-Soviet Russia. In this paper, I argue that trade minorities do indeed operate at Russian open-air markets. However, they do so in a specific manner that stems from the historical and cultural conditioning of petty trade in the former USSR. This study shows the development of ethnic entrepreneurship and appearance of different stereotypes that are tied to it. What is more, it analyzes some ways in which different minorities coexist. In general, the study deals with the extremely complex issue of interethnic relationships in post-Soviet Russia.
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The adoption of new normative documents in the field of education in Bulgaria determines the inclusion of children with special educational needs in general education schools. The significant and integral role which physical education plays in the educational process poses the question of the inclusion of children with impairments in motor activity training as well. Teachers implementing it contribute greatly to its positive effects. The main features of physical education include active motor activity and the related physical workload. In order for them to be adapted successfully to the specific needs of children with different disabilities, more specialized training is required. The analysis of the curricula of the faculties of education in Bulgaria shows that future pre-school and primary school teachers who will be responsible for the physical education of children in kindergartens and primary schools respectively do not receive appropriate training in adaptive physical education. The aim of this article is to present a concept for introducing a training programme on “Motor Activity Training and Inclusive Physical Education”, intended for students of the specialty Preschool and Primary School Education at the Faculty of Education, Trakia University, Bulgaria.
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The consequence of the military aggression of the Russian Federation is the loss of control over part of the territory of Donetsk and Luhansk regions in Eastern Ukraine and the annexation of the Crimean peninsula. The events are accompanied by the objective processes of migration of persons who were forced to leave their permanent residence and move to other regions of Ukraine or abroad. As a result, a new category of citizens who are the internally displaced persons (IDPs) has arrived in the country counting for millions of people. In such circumstances, the study of the interdependence between gross regional product (GRP) and the IDP migration is topical and reflects the ongoing social and economic processes in a big European country. As a result of the study, a two-layer neural network with an error back-propagation model that simulates the nonlinear impact of the number of internally displaced persons on the dynamics of gross regional product has been constructed. According to the number of IDPs, regions such as Donetsk, Luhansk, Kharkiv, Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv, including Kyiv city, are among the first ten regions of Ukraine. Based on the data from the abovementioned regions, we have formed a statistical sampling in order to formulate and test the prospective economic and mathematical model. The study of mutual correlation function graphs by regions has allowed justifying the value of the time lag, which shifts an array of explanatory variables along the time axis, on average, into nine periods (three quarters). According to the results, only for Kharkiv, Donetsk, Luhansk, Zaporizhzhia and Kyiv regions, there is a significant correlation between the studied indicators. This conclusion is substantiated in view of the fact that the number of IDPs, in the structure of which only about 23% represents the working age population, impacts the size of the gross product growth in the regions. The abovementioned regions account for 75% of the total number of internally displaced persons. The estimation of the forecast reliability, based on the 2017 data for Dnipropetrovsk region, points to the high accuracy of the developed model. The author of the article has identified specific features that accompany the processes of internal migration of the able-bodied population. In particular, based on the correlation function, the value of the time lag, which is shifted by the effect of IDP movement into a separate region, has been substantiated. The author has developed a neural network which establishes nonlinear regression dependence between the number if IDPs and the dynamics of GRP with high reliability.
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This research takes the form of an essay with two-folded goals: to bring further clarifications on the concept of brand equity, as it was discussed in the branding literature, while at the same time presenting the frameworks that could help both practitioners and researchers to measure the power of a brand. For this purpose, the authors have reviewed the existing literature, and discussed the most important perspectives on the topic: the financial-based and consumer-based brand equity, while at the same time debating the limitations of each one. The findings have implications for future research into a holistic approach to brand equity, that should see an increase of the customer’s perceived brand equity.
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This article aims to briefly analyze the research efforts on measuring welfare indices in terms of cultural relativism. It presents the limitations of GDP and some of the proposed alternatives over time, to understand the wideness and interest in this topic, but also the consequences of imposing a certain type of indicators to reflect the progress and welfare of a country. To provide a coherent overview on the proposed subject, the approach starts with the presentation of general acceptation of the welfare concept. Further, the literature review reveals many concerns about the welfare and progress, but also the difficulties associated with this effort. Critical comments generally reflect the need to consider the culture factor in the debate on welfare.
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This article advances the idea that post-conflict societies encounter a twofold challenge in the transitional context; the first challenge is the past – how to heal the wounds, whilst the second challenge is to look forward and provide solutions for a sustainable future, where human rights are promoted and respected. I argue that the complex legal, political, economic and social situation in northern Uganda requires the reconciliation between past, present and future, by merging transitional justice (pastoriented) with economic and social justice (future-oriented), so as to meet the victims‘ needs and in the same time secure a stable transitional regime. The first section of the article will deal with the interplay between conflict and poverty in Uganda and the governmental measures taken in this regard. The following two sections will briefly examine the various transitional justice mechanisms employed here as well as the unfortunate situation relating to socio-economic rights. Based on the arguments advanced in the previous sections, the final part outlines some measures to accommodate economic and social rights within transitional justice mechanisms, suggesting that the later must be part of a broader set of policies for socioeconomic development and reconciliation.
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In the last decades we are witnessing to a turn in the interaction between the citizen, as clients, and the public administration, mainly in the level of citizens’ increased expectations about the quality delivered by public service organisations. The citizen is asking for quality service with accountability of the professional factors in public organizations. This article will discuss two main phenomena in public service today: accountability and service quality.
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The article discusses the model of application of Action Research methodology in the context of the applied project ‘Training for Ecopreneurship at Three Bulgarian Universities’ (2015–2016). The project is conducted by the Institute for the Study of Societies and Knowledge at the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences in cooperation with the Institute for Energy and Environmental Research, Heidelberg, with the financial support of the German Federal Environmental Foundation, DBU. Beneficiaries and associate partners in Bulgaria are the University of Ruse, the Academy of Economics, Svishtov, the University of Food Technologies, Plovdiv, and Technology Centre, Sofia – organization for technology transfer and advocacy of German businesses in Bulgaria. The project’s main objective is to introduce educational modules for so-called ecopreneurship (sustainable entrepreneurship) in these three universities. Our approach is closer to the so-called Participative Action Research, trying to involve different stakeholders in the different stages of the project. Thus, we want not only to reflect the process, but to induce ‘social change’ with the active participation of the actors. At the core of our intervention is the educational design and implementation of innovative ecopreneurship training for students, based on a competency model (or a model of linked competencies that would lead to building accomplishments) co-developed by the students and previously engaged experts. These competencies are sought, applied, and developed in the learning process through the so-called Backward Design Approach, comprising five phases, each with a different focus: 1) group cohesion development, initial assessment and joint goal-setting; 2) phase of enhancing a deeper understanding of basic concepts through experience, and raising essential no-single-answer questions; 3) immersion in the actual field, active learning of the content based on researching authentic problems; 4) learning by doing a desired type of real-world project/learning product; and 5) students’ showcase in which they present themselves through these projects, which serve as a record for their learning achievement.
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The family is nowadays confronted with many difficulties and problems, in order to maintain and fulfill presumed functions and the expected role. The changes that take place at high speed in all aspects of contemporary society has significant consequences on the situation, the development, the role and place of the family in society. Certainly, the most important phenomena of our time is globalization. It leads to major changes in society and the way of life of every man. The reason this study educational function of the family, keeping in mind a few important moments. One of them is all the more pronounced role as the basis of scientific, technical, technological and civilization development in general. Increasingly there is a need of education and learning, raising the educational level of the people, developing their professional and spiritual abilities and training, and only the only way that it can successfully respond to the daily changes that occur during this period.
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This article analyzes the Human development in modern society, it also analyzes the social development and quality of life relationship. Human Social Development regards human as a value not only because he/she is a producer of material goods. Human is considered both as an objective and a tool of development. In fact, the development where a human is a centre of attention means a human progress, a progress in a human and a progress under the authority of a human. A growth of choices is everyone’s opportunity to take responsibility for their own lives. Development gives human freedom to choose, but he/she must decide what to choose. Human social development has two sides: on the one hand, physical, psychological, mental and professional capabilities of a human are developed, on the other hand, acquired capabilities allow human to efficiently use them in cultural, economic or political activity. Provision of choices makes sense only when ability to ensure well-being both to present and future generations is maintained.
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For decades now, experts have studied and documented the severe environmental and land degradation across Africa. However, the nature of the problem has now been ratcheted up by mounting and undisputed scientific evidence demonstrating a clear causal link between tropical deforestation and global climate change. The external observers of the deteriorating African landscape continue to watch in alarm, sometimes heralding a concerted global response. The African environmental “crisis” that once was framed solely in the context of the direct effects of desertification, deforestation and land degradation on African ecosystems, economies and societies, is now in fact unhinged from the location of rapidly advancing desertification and deforestation to a much broader, world-wide crisis. There is now a rapid need for an effective environment ethic hinged on socio-cultural substance which recognize indigenous people, further shape their association with natural habitat. The thrust of this paper is to have a look at African environmental ethics.
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