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This essay aims to analyse A instalação do medo e Índice médio de felicidade, two novels about the social and emotional effects of the most recent economic crisis, which began in 2008. Both are examples of how the Portuguese art was influenced by that crisis as well as of some relevant transformations occurring in Portuguese contemporary literature.
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The paper presents the results of research, whose main goal is to evaluate the aviation and rocket capability of the armed forces of the Russian Federation and Ukraine in terms of a possible launch of regular warfare. The authors primarily focus on changes in the military doctrine of the Russian Federation, which have created legal determinants of the use of armed forces outside the country’s territory in defense of national minorities, illustrated by taking control of Crimea. The authors also stress Russia’s military plans, including the development directions of the potential of armed forces as well as a possible threat to the security of the eastern NATO’s flank in the event of a conflict in Ukraine. In this respect, the capabilities of the air defense of countries on the eastern NATO flank, particularly Poland’s capability, were analyzed.
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This work is a response to the EIOPA paper entitled ‘Systemic risk and macroprudential policy in insurance’, which asserts that in order to evaluate the potential systemic risk (SR), the build-up of risk, especially risk arising over time, should be taken into account, as well as the interlinkages occurring in the financial sector and the whole economy. The topological indices of minimum spanning trees (MST) and the deltaCoVaR measure are the main tools used to analyse the systemic risk dynamics in the European insurance sector in the years 2005-2019. The article analyses the contribution of each of the 28 largest European insurance companies, including those appearing on the G-SIIs list, to systemic risk. Moreover, the paper aims to determine whether the most important contribution to systemic risk is made by companies with the highest betweenness centrality or the highest degree in the obtained MST.
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Administrative sciences and public law in general have experienced in recent decades several challenges of a political and economic nature that have resulted in concepts modification and transformation, forcing academics and practitioners to adapt to them. As an effect of these changes, the creation of a global model from a political and administrative perspective can be discussed from many directions, and scientists were interested on it. Any objective analysis of these decades requires the identification of the main features of such a possible model, because global crises – such as the one we are in – usually contribute to their crystallization. It is therefore necessary a discussion in this regard, in order to be closer to contemporary realities. Our text will try to underline the main lines of such discussion, being conscious that an exhaustive approach is not possible in one scientific article.
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Today, there are about 15 million people in the world who consider themselves Hungarian. One third of these people experience their Hungarianness outside the Trianon borders. Academic literature divides Hungarians living outside the country into two large groups, the native and the migrant diaspora. In my paper, I examine whether this division is tenable after the accession of Hungary and, with the exception of Ukraine and Serbia, the neighbouring countries to the European Union and the opportunities provided by the open labour market, or whether it is necessary to introduce a third diaspora group. I specifically examined the attitude of the members of the two groups to the Hungariannes, the nation, the citizenship, the local Hungarian community and the ecclesial communities, and I call on the readers and decision-makers to think together about what can be done for the preservation of the declining Hungarian diaspora.
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The peaceful revolutions of 1989 created a new Europe. This Europe is threatened to be lost today – 30 years later. Within the European continent national intolerance and the use of violence are part of everyday life. Politics is becoming more and more intransparent. Are there chances for change? Anyone who subscribes to the values of the Enlightenment is always at the beginning.
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Background: Cross-border mergers and acquisitions (CBM&As) have taken the form of a network, as there are complex business relationships between the participating entities. The concept of social network analysis (SNA) to study business connections is poorly described in the literature. There is also a lack of comprehensive structure studies on CBM&A purchases by Central and Eastern Europe (CEE) companies. Research purpose: The purpose is to evaluate the geographical and sectoral structure of the Polish, Czech, and Hungarian CBM&A network in 2010–2020. This article also aims to present a new methodological approach to studying the structure of the M&A market related to the application of SNA metrics. Methods: The study is carried out using social network analysis. Sectoral M&A data taken from the Eikon Refinitiv database are used, and several network indicators are applied, i.e., degree, prestige, and betweenness centrality, for the analysis. Conclusions: In 2010–2020, Polish, Czech, and Hungarian companies were characterized by investment activity not only in the CEE countries, but also in Western Europe, Russia, and the United States. Enterprises from the financials, industrials, consumer cyclicals, and technology sectors have played an important role in CBM&A networks. Entities operating in the energy and healthcare sectors (in Hungary) and the real estate and utilities sectors (in Czechia) have also occupied a central place in the analyzed networks. Private equity and hedge funds play a key role in cross-sectoral transactions.
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The adoption of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development in 2015 inaugurated a paradigm shift. More and more states have developed measures to reach the 17 global Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). Sustainable development in the sense of the 2030 Agenda requires a profound, long-term change in all areas. The pressure on companies to act is increasing, as verifiable sustainability is demanded from all sides now. Whereas the focus of companies used to lay on the product and the profit, nowadays it is much more on the sustainability of the product and makes companies face up to ecological and social responsibility. All companies, whether small or large, are participating in this change to varying degrees. In order to find out to how this change in thinking has already taken place, this paper investigated the extent to which companies are focusing on sustainable development. In the following paper, 30 Dax companies are analysed in terms of how much the topic of sustainability and thus terms such as Agenda 2030, SDG, ESG and others are taken up on the company website and thus the importance is highlighted in comparison to the product. For this purpose, it was examined how many mouse clicks were needed on the website to come across the previously mentioned terms and how many of these terms were listed on the website.
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How do Estonians imagine themselves as a nation? According to a popular Estonian essayist, a proper Estonian digs his garden on Mondays and mines his bitcoins on Tuesdays. This article focuses on Estonian imaginaries to study the grounding structures of Estonian identity-creation in the 2010s and it articulates the core of a canonized understanding of Estonian identity as “eco-digital nationhood.” The article explores Estonia’s eco-digital national model as produced by an aesthetic screening, supported by a Western gaze adapted for local purposes of positive identity creation. In Estonia, international approval (for its reputation as a digital nation) has fostered a national selfimage of living in a digital state. Technological advancement combined with idealizations of natural environments have sometimes produced “eco-ambiguous” results, as in efforts to encounter nonhuman life-worlds without leaving one’s own comfort zone. In other instances, the eco and the digital function as two alternating modes of selfhood, the eco-part sometimes finding expression in the narratives of ethnic particularism, the digital part figuring Estonia as a herald of western modernism prudently adapting itself to the digital future. Discrepancies between the eco-digital imaginary and the many less flattering elements of Estonian actuality highlight selective (self-)representative strategies in narratives of national success. Nation building here emerges as a metonymic process, wherein certain parts of culture are foregrounded to represent the whole— while other parts, including substantial parts of the Soviet heritage (material, demographic, social, psychological) languish as unsuitable to be framed.
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The first round of talks regarding the negotiations of a treaty prohibiting nuclear weapons (their use, production, ownership, etc.) took place on March 27–31, 2017, at the UN Headquarters in New York under the presidency of Ambassador Elayne Whyte Gómez of Costa Rica. The second, and final round of talks, during which the finalization and adoption of the proposed convention is expected, should take place in New York from June 15 to July 7, 2017. The aforementioned first round was preceded by an organizational meeting in New York on February 16, 2017, in the presence of representatives of more than 100 countries, at which the provisional agenda and the rules of procedure for the general meeting of the UN General Assembly were agreed. According to these rules, a two-thirds majority is necessary for decisions on important questions and a simple majority of all present members is required for procedural issues. In contrast to consensus decision-making, which is valid, for instance, for the Conference on Disarmament in Geneva, no country present at the UN conference can veto an adopted decision.The first round of negotiations was attended by around 130 countries, and representatives of several organizations, such as the UN, the International Committee of the Red Cross, and a number of non-governmental organizations, as well as surviving victims of the US-caused nuclear explosion in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which are called Hibakusha in Japan. All countries that own nuclear weapons, as well as a large majority of Alliance states, including the Czech Republic, and partner countries relying on nuclear protection, especially protection by the US, boycotted the meeting. From the Alliance states, only the Netherlands attended, and from the European Union states, the already mentioned Netherlands, and also Austria, Sweden and Ireland participated. From the partner countries, Japan was present.
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The youth age period (0-14 age), which is one of the most important periods of human life, is also an important demographic indicator for countries. In this study, youth population, twenty five percent of the total population in Turkey, is examined from the perspective of time and space on provincial level. The coefficient of variation (CV) and Moran I index value was used to analyze the development of the young population parameter respectively over time and space. According to the CV results, the youth age population diversity increasess lightly between the provinces from 2007 to 2018. In the 0-4 age group shows high spatial pattern along the southeastern and eastern provinces. High spatial pattern is observed in 5-9 groups of central and northeast provinces. 0- 4 and 5-9 age groups of these two regions are almost displaced by spatial pattern. All the findings shows that the young population in Turkey reveals a rapid change especially to 0-4 and 5-9 age groups. Population changes are often the subject of long-term analysis. This study emphasize that the population structure of a country can transform radically in the short term. This finding could lead policy makers on shorter term demographic solutions.
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Due to the growing pressures on the educational area to provide young people with the knowledge and skills needed to live and work in a constantly changing society and the technologies and trades that today do not exist, the model of learning organization has been extended to schools, as an attempt to re-conceptualize them from organizations that are traditionally linked to the learning and knowledge process to organizations that are capable of responding with efficiency to uncertain and dynamic environments. The purpose of this paper is to identify the state of affairs in the Romanian educational system (pre-university level) in order to provide a starting point for the implementation of the ‘school as a learning organization’ concept and model. The approach is theoretical, using desk research of regulations and data regarding the public expenditure in education, per capita funding, number of pupils enrolled, PISA results and correlations between the action-oriented dimensions (including their key characteristics/elements) of the model proposed by Kools & Stoll (2017) and the performance indicators (including descriptors) that are used at the Romanian national level. Results show that, between 2009 and 2018, school organizations were under increasing pressure and the implementation of this concept and model at system level could be an opportunity to focus on students from the organizational side, having the determined correlations as a foundation.
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Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, Moscow’s attention rapidly retreated from the Middle East, partly on account of a major drop in resources, and partly because of a devaluation of the region in political terms. Of the earlier client countries, Egypt had already distanced itself from the Soviet Union in the 1970s. As a consequence of Saddam Hussein’s confrontational politics Iraq, became such an uncomfortable partner that Gorbachev did not pose any obstacle at all to the forceful bridling of Iraq after it overran Kuwait in the summer of 1990. Thereon Syria remained – in addition to Iran – the only country in the region that continued to benefit from Moscow’s attention and support after the end of the Soviet Union. A number of circumstances contributed to this position: significant debts Damascus had stacked up towards Moscow; the use of Soviet arms across the Syrian army; the regional weight and importance of the country; as well as the fact that the only military base Russia finally kept outside of the CIS area was the Tartus naval base in Syria. After sketching an overview of the Soviet Union’s Middle East politics with special attention to its relations with Egypt, Iraq, and Syria, this study sets out to provide a detailed introduction to the role Putin’s Russia has assumed in the Syrian crisis since 2011.
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Many of us probably do not realise the role that heavy-duty hand cleaning paste has played in the history of the Eastern bloc. In Poland, for instance, this product was called pasta BHP, and it was commonly used to remove stains from paint and grease. Its trade allowed one Polish family, the Kulczyks, to become billionaires. In the Soviet republics, that paste was called Landish and was popularly used in households as a washing detergent.
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Objective: The objective of this study is to propose a model for talent allocation to economic activities and rent-seeking based on some effective factors. Research Design & Methods: We examined the research model using the panel data method based on data from selected developing countries in the years 2014-2018. Findings: Our results indicated that market size, firm scale, and the quality of property rights all affect the talent allocation based on the theoretical logic of our research’s modelling. Implications & Recommendations: It seems necessary for an economy to worry about circumstances that influence the quality of property rights, market size, and firm scale in addition to human capital accumulation in order to reinforce the talents’ tendency towards productive activities rather than rent-seeking; that is, to promote economic growth. Contribution & Value Added: Moving a step forward from the quality of human sources towards allocating them as “economy talents,” we proposed a model to explain how market size, firm scale, and quality of property rights affect talents’ choice between productive activities and rent-seeking, via Romer’s quality of property rights model expansion.
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Urodzona w Łodzi. Z wykształcenia etnograf. W latach 1974-1980 pracowała w filmie jako asystent i drugi reżyser (m.in z Wacławem Borowczykiem, Krzysztofem Kieślowskim, Piotrem Szulkinem, Krzysztofem Zanussim, Andrzejem Trzosem-Rastawieckim). W 1980 roku porzuciła film na rzecz fotografii. Dokumentowała początki przemian politycznych w Polsce i narodziny „Solidarności”. W stanie wojennym związana z niezależnym ruchem kulturalnym, współpracowała też z podziemną prasą solidarnościową. Od końca 1982 roku wszystkie zdjęcia z życia codziennego w Polsce włącza do zbioru Fotodziennik czyli piosenka o końcu świata. Zdjęcia opatrzone krótkimi odręcznymi podpisami - subiektywny zapis, klatki pamięci - a jednocześnie ostry komentarz polskiej rzeczywistości. Zapis ten powstaje nadal. Bohdziewicz jest też autorką innych dużych projektów, których realizacja trwa od wielu lat: Kapliczki warszawskie, Kosmos, Antypocztówki, Piękni i szczęśliwi, Prywatna telewizja. Anna Bohdziewicz była też komisarzem wielu wystaw fotograficznych (m.in. „Fotografie Gazety Wyborczej”, „Pod ręką boską” Marka Rostworowskiego, „Warszawa 1943-1944. Fotograf nieznany”). Razem z Mariuszem Hermanowiczem stworzyła wystawę „Ofiary stanu wojennego”. Jest także autorką licznych recenzji i tekstów o fotografii oraz wywiadów z fotografami, m.in. z Zofią Rydet, Edwardem Hartwigiem, Annie Leibowitz. Ma na swoim koncie szereg wystaw krajowych i zagranicznych, zarówno w Europie jak i w Ameryce. Fotodziennik pokazywany był w ponad 60 krajach świata. Wydała Kapliczki warszawskie (razem z Magdaleną Stopą), Warszawa 2008; 1981. Lekki powiew wolności, Warszawa 2014; Wszystko od nowa. 1989. Fotodziennik, Warszawa 2014.
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The USA publishs human rights reports about UN countries every year. Although these reports are written on certain values, it is seen that the political relations of the relevant country with the USA are decisive in the context. In this article, human rights reports published by the USA during the AK Party period are analyzed in line with the USA’s effort to maintain its own hegemony by relating it to the content of Turkish-American relations. Instead of examining all documents relating to the AK Party Governments, which contain many years and still continue, the reports of 2003, 2008, 2014 and 2016, which created a break in bilateral relations and Turkey’s domestic policy, are examined.
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ʿAbd al-Ilāh b. ʿArafa is a well-known Moroccan writer for his gnostic novel project. The eleventh work of his 14 novels project that he planned to write was published in 2019. In these novels, the life stories of historical characters exist with imaginary and spiritual subjects. The goal of these books is not only to talk about the lives of historical figures but also to give place to spiritual issues and take the reader on an inner journey. In this study, we have examined the third novel of Ibn ʻArafa, Bilād Ṣād in terms of the elements of history, imagination, and knowledge. We have tried to determine how these elements take place in the novel. The novel is about the life story of the Andalusian poet Abū al-Ḥasan al-Shushtarī, and it touches on the social and political life of the period in which Shushtarī lived. It is clear that in this novel, some of Shushtarī’s poems exist. Thus, the messages of the book are supported by meanings expressed in the poetry of Shushtarī.
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Bratislava, one of the less globally interconnected cities before 1989, is being gradually transformed into a more cosmopolitan European city as a result of developing capitalism and Slovakia joining the European Union. The choice of restaurants and the offer of various foodstuffs and goods in Bratislava are much wider today than in the past. People can visit many “ethnic” restaurants, and we can also observe an increasing number and range of shops with “exotic” food from Asia and the Middle East. It is not a problem anymore to buy rice noodles, sushi, or spices from all over the world. Kebab fast-food, sushi bars, Asian snack-bars, and Chinese restaurants became a visible part of the public space. The transformation after 1989 and the subsequent social change affected to a various degree all layers of the population which adapted to the new living conditions. In this context, the change also affected migration between Vietnam and Czechoslovakia which was previously developing under the guise of friendly socialist countries. Even before 1989, Vietnamese citizens pertained to the group of migrants who could enter the territory of the closed socialist Czechoslovakia and their mobility was supported by both countries. The way the fall of socialism affected the lives and strategies of migrants living in Czechoslovakia in the breakthrough period are described in their individual stories that I sought to present in this study.
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Which conflict resolution method should be employed to maximise the outcomes of acceptable regional security and sustained peace in Crimea? As the current international conflict management mechanisms are of limited effect, Ukraine pushes for the new Crimean Platform format. The author explores whether the “peacebuilding” approach used to address the armed conflict in Donetsk and Luhansk oblasts is hereto relevant. Some good practices of this approach – dialogue, advocacy of humanitarian issues, and people connectivity – can be used for the temporarily occupied Crimea.
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