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The right to vote is recognized as a fundamental political right of the citizens. Its universal character is a guarantee for democratic governance. In recent years there has been a decline in citizens’ political activity, leading to a non-participation in elections. The ideas to introduce compulsory voting system pose a threat to aconstitutional right being transformed into a legal obligation.
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The reforms in the political system in Bulgaria are usually confined to changes in the electoralsystem. The government is not directly affected by the evolution of the party system, and its effectiveness does not directly depend on the number of political parties. The stability of the party system is not the only criterion for assessing the political representation. Proposals to change the electoral system are primarily aimed at reducing the number of parties in order to form one-party parliamentary majority. However, these majorities do not always achieve political stability.
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The article presents the distinction between the functions of the National Assembly – „political” and „constitutional”. The constitutional parliamentary functions are divided into three groups - legislative, constitutive and control. Each function is analyzed by virtue of specific powers of the National Assembly. Elements of the rationalization of parliamentarism in recent times in Europe are also found in the Constitutionof the Republic of Bulgaria. On the one hand, the powers of the political institution have been enriched, with the possibility of parliamentary oversight of the authorities activity, which the National Assembly forms in whole or in part. On the other hand, within the parliamentary control function, the Constitution establishes a clear boundary between the parliamentary control over the executive power and the possibilities for seeking collective political responsibility.
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The political campaign for the presidential and vice presidential election in the Republic of Bulgaria in October – November 2016 gives rise to research interest and is topical. The campaign discusses the messages of the candidates during their coverage in online media and social networks. Focus is placed on their disclosures in the media, as well as the specific political rhetoric on the part of the candidates regarding their opponents in the campaign. Based on a content analysis and using the descriptive approach, articles in the media and social networking publications are analyzed for the purpose of the specific study. The analysis aims to trace whether the specific disclosures for candidates remain as separate publications in a media or turn into political scandals that are effective enough to discredit a presidential and vice presidential candidate. It also aims to address the question of how much media attention is given to individual politicians, their characteristics and qualities, extracts from their biographies, or it focuses public attention on their political and management achievements. Do individual politicians have a key role and do they shun the parties, institutions and organizations from the focus of the media?
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The importance and relevance of tracking and analyzing China-US relations, which are today key global countries with a huge impact on the world, can hardly be questioned. The aims of this study are, on the one hand, to examine and understand how these relations have developed over time, especially since initially the United States and then the PRC became global powers. On the other hand, the author analyses the problem of how the dynamics of these relations affect the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which are today mainly under the “lid” of the influence of the West.
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The article analyzes the legal framework of one of the classical forms of parliamentary control – the no-confidence vote – as the main way of engaging and realizing the political responsibility of the Bulgarian Council of Ministers. Its implications are considered in both legal and political terms. The mechanisms laid down by the fathers of the 1991 Constitution, which protect the government from unjustified early termination of its powers, are analyzed. The need for more transparency in the implementation of the controlling powers of the National Assembly is stressed upon.
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In the article are presented the main logical points through which Peter Struve (1870–1944) explained the functioning of exchange and the coordination of individual economic activities. Value and the theory of value are eliminated. In its mildest form, it is subordinated to the theory of price and the theory of money. Accounting and statistics, as well as legal norms, became leading mechanisms for measuring individual human efforts. Peter Struve can be seen as a prominent representative of monetary analysis (if one follows Joseph Schumpeter's famous classification in his History of Economic Analysis).
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The article examines essential aspects of the development of the media, which led to relations of interdependence with the sphere of politics. Due to their nature, the most affected by this process are the political parties, encountering increasing difficulties in their adaptation to modern conditions. The main analysis is focused on the interference of the media in some basic functions of the parties, which adversely affects the development of representative democracy.
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The identity of the Balkans is a phenomenon difficult to diagnose due to its hybrid nature conditioned by many factors (history, tradition, language, religion, geographical location). In the context of migration movements and their intensification after 2015, the so-called the Balkan route has become an area of interest for both scientists and political actors seeking to increase the effectiveness of the migration policy. In the narrative of some political actors (especially neonational ones), an argument appeared about the civilization threat that migration movements pose to destination and transit countries. Therefore, an attempt was made to analyse this threat, starting with determining the features of the Balkan identity, and above all its strength or dispersion. The obtained answers to the research questions make it possible to formulate a thesis about a slight degree of changes that may occur in the identity of the region under the influence of migration. High cultural diversity minimizes the influence of the environment on the multi-layer identity.
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The article looks at the contemporary socio-economic model in Bulgaria arguing that it does not correspond to the broad European tradition of being sensitive to the presence of significant social imbalances in the society. The author insists that this is one of the primary factors for the controversial economic outcomes and the existence of deepening social problems in the country. The argumentation goes through evaluation of the formation process of the new socio-economic model in Bulgaria after 1989 and the assessment of the economic and social outcomes for the period until 2022. On this basis it is concluded that maintaining the current policy in the medium-term will inevitably undermine not only the economic prospects, but also the quality and stability of Bulgarian democracy.
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This paper explores one of the most influential conspiracy theories of all time, as described in the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, by employing the method of structural analysis. The “master myth” of the Protocols represents a basic structure of the conspiracy narrative, whose motifs were subsequently modified throughout the 20th and 21st centuries according to current events and moods. However, to understand the pamphlet as a whole, it is also important to shed a little light on its specific historical context and the religious, political, and social fervour of the time, which eventually gave rise to this text. The text is one we can still consider a blueprint of contemporary conspiracy narratives about the global cabal that occupies a prominent place within the modern conspiracy culture.
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The following text aims to offer and illustrate a new concept for grasping the phenomenon of conspiracy theories. Based on field research in the form of semi-structured interviews and previous research, it provides a triadic schema for navigating the conspiracy landscape and understanding the transformations and functions that conspiracy theories provide to their adherents. After introducing the topic, the first part of the text briefly summarises previous research relevant to the article and describes the theoretical position on which it is based. Subsequently, it uses H. S. Versnel’s schema to introduce the three levels of meaning of conspiracy narratives: substantivist, functionalist, and cosmological. It then concludes by reflecting on the possible applications of this framework and its relevance for future research.
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The article is an attempt to describe the anti-Putin stance of contemporary Russian writerand thinker Dmitry Lvovich Bykov (b. 1967), from his first novel Justification (2020) to his most recent pro-freedom and anti-imperialist statements from July 2023, when he was already in exile in the USA. The author’s key text here is the 2019 article 20 Years of Putin – 20 Years in Reverse Gear, in which the author reaffirms his negative attitude toward Putinism as “archaic imperialism”, the cause of Russia’s illegal annexation of Ukraine’s Crimea and now Russia’s February 24, 2022 attack on Ukraine. The article also discusses Bykov’s negative attitude toward historical and contemporary Russian fascism, of which the writer also considers Fyodor Dostoevsky to be largely representative. An important part of the article is also a general description of Bykov’s very positive attitude to contemporary Polish culture and literature – mainly to the works of Leszek Kolakowski, Stanislaw Lem, Wislawa Szymborska, Agnieszka Osiecka, Czeslaw Milosz. The text ends by recalling Dmitry Bykov’s dramatic and compassionate statement of July 6, 2023, on the death of the 37-year-old Ukrainian writer Victoria Amelina, who died of wounds sustained under Russian bombs in Kramatorsk, in the Donetsk region of Ukraine. At the same time, the article is a kind of extensive introduction to the reading of Grzegorz Przebinda’s interview with Dmitry Bykov, published immediately below in “Studia Pigoniana”, recorded in Krakow in October 2019 on the occasion of the Russian writer’s stay at the Conrad Festival.
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The article is aimed at presenting the connection between the science of psychology and the phenomenon of terrorism. It reveals the importance of personality socialization and the need for a sense of belonging. It also discloses the stages of susceptibility to radicalization at an individual level and at the level of a nuclear family in the stages of personality development. Moreover, it presents the reasons for the emergence of family terrorism and the inculcated belief that martyrdom is of high moral value. It presents martyrdom as a problem that must find its solution before many children become victims of a certain type of terrorism, be it on a religiously motivated basis.
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The purpose of Law 139/2015 was the creation of local self-government units and their respective bodies so that the service would be provided by bodies that are as close as possible to the citizens in relation to the principles of subsidiarity, decentralization and local autonomy. In this way, services can be better implemented and the interests of citizens can be better protected within the respective local units. This paper deals with the importance of citizens’ voice in local government decision-making. It focuses on their participation during the meetings of the municipal council, on their right to give an opinion or suggestion in connection with the review and approval of the act, on their right of citizen initiative, etc. Their participation in local elections and local referendums has also been addressed. Part of the work is an analysis of their right to voice their opinion on the territorial administrative division of local self-government units.
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The article examines the economic aspect of international conflicts, in particular the role of the economic component in international conflicts. Individual causes of occurrence, management methods and principles of conflict resolution were studied, in order to structure theoretical knowledge about conflicts and determining the role of economic aspects in the reasons of conflicts, its influence on their course and the possibility of applying of economy as a lever that contributes to the prevention, resolution or minimization of the negative consequences of international conflicts, the search for solutions and the prevention of such in the future, also by taking into account the results of previous scientific studies and using the examples of modern interstate disputes.The main three functions that can be performed by the conflict economy have been defined and the importance of such roles for understanding the nature of the conflict and determining the methodology of its management and resolution has been defined.Authors studied the reasons of actual conflicts to reveal the role of economic aspects of each conflict in order to realize how is economy applied in those conflicts and if it could be as an instrument of aggression or as an instrument of stabilization and resolving the conflict. Also, the nature of conflicts itself was examined to understand if it is possible to find some signs that there is a possibility that a conflict is coming. This understanding could help to prevent the worst consequences of such foreign policy or how to manage it better.Some aspects of the psychology of the conflict were examined. The aim of studying this aspect was to realize which aspects give the possibility to the government to step in the conflict. And how the internal policy of some country could testify that country is preparing to some kind of a conflict.The different systems of internal state organizing were examined to understand which of them is more stable and which one is less stable and could not only move forward to the conflict, but also could be a kind of such conflict.
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Sanfte Chemie, or soft chemistry, is a scientific and philosophical concept developed in the 1980s under the auspices of the German Green Party (Die Grünen). Its purpose was to thoroughly reconstruct not only the chemical industry but also chemistry as a science in the spirit of environmentalism. Soft chemistry followers wanted to forge a new scientific method and criticized what they called a Baconian-Cartesian paradigm in the philosophy of science. Even though the sanfte Chemie project ceased to be endorsed by the Green Party in the 1990s because of its radicalism, the history of epistemological foundations, on which the soft chemistry was built, gives us a privileged insight into a vision of chemical sciences as advocated by early proponents of sustainability and pioneers of environmental movements.The article analyses sources of sanfte Chemie, highlighting plurality and complexity of scientific, philosophical, political and ideological traditions that served as its basis. The study of the eco-critical narratives on empirical sciences allows us to better understand subsequent political choices concerning science, industry and the environment in Germany. In particular, the article shows that the tradition on which sanfte Chemie was built, gives it the advantage over later concepts, such as green chemistry, that lack philosophical depth.The purpose of the article is to question the relation between the philosophy of science and the practice of science and ponder whether different chemistry is possible at all.
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The study aims to explore the economic and political consequences of the introduction of generative artificial intelligence, characterized by its ability to create any type of content. Its object is the generative artificial intelligence, and the subject is about the changes it brings to economy and politics. Politico-economic approach is applied to investigate the interactions of technology with the economy and politics. It is based on the understanding that changes in technology depend on politics and economics, but at the same time they cause changes in both. The study begins with the definition of generative artificial intelligence and its differences from other types of artificial intelligence, what it can do and what its limitations are. The implications for the economy, production, exchange, distribution, consumption are then considered. The questions about the prospects, fears, social controversies it brings are also analyzed. It ends with the role of politics in the development, regulation, limitation, implication, management of generative artificial intelligence, because the social contradictions it brings might become dangerous for the society and politics. The scope of the research is global, and from this comes the main conclusion that the development of artificial intelligence is a global problem that requires global solutions.
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This article aims at analysing the cognitive and pragmatic aspects of metaphors in the inauguration speech of the Spanish Presidente del Gobierno Adolfo Suárez, in Spain’s first constitutional government. The paper will uses a multi-disciplinary approach and relies on Lakoff and Johnson’s Conceptual Metaphor Theory, Charteris-Black’s Critical Metaphor Analysis, Teun Van Dijk’s context model theory, as well as on other pragmatic concepts that contribute to assessing the coherence and cohesion of the text. This qualitative approach intends to look for the presence of metaphors and conceptual metaphors in the speech, while attempting to identify the pragmatic strategies behind them.
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