A Civil Law Perespective on the Supreme Court and its Functions

Author(s): Aleš Galič / Language(s): English Issue: 81/2019

The text presents the issue of the Supreme Court’s functions from the perspective of civil law countries. The author argues that the division into cassation, revision and appeal is not an adequate point of reference enabling to define those functions. The author asserts that the most important criterion is whether the Supreme Court acts overwhelmingly in public or private interest. The assessment of that criterion should be made on the basis of the methods of selection of cases by the Supreme Court. What is essential is whether the selection is based on public aims or whether it simply aims at solving a given case accurately. It may be argued that as a result of reforms introduced in the last few years, the majorityof civil law countries have focusedon the implementation of the public rather than private functions. The author concludes that the public function of supreme courts is of a completely different significance than in the times of socialism. The public interest is combined with private interest as it refers to the situation of parties – not parties to the specific proceedings, but all parties which are going to engage in litigation in the future.

A Conceptual History of Political Regimes: Democracy, Dictatorship, and Authoritarianism

Author(s): Adam Przeworski / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2017

The labels we attach today to distinguish political regimes have histories. Applying them without understanding these histories is sometimes anachronistic and ethnocentric. I have little new to say about “democracy” and “dictatorship”, so that the discussion of these concepts is just a reminder. “Authoritarianism”, however, is a dubious neologism. I advance two claims: (1) In all regimes the power to command and be obeyed entails some dose of reason-giving, (2) What distinguishes regimes is the form and the extent to which the authority of rulers is monopolised by physical force. I conclude that the concept of “authoritarianism” adds little to the distinction between democracy and dictatorship.

A Different Country. Russia’s Economic Resurgence

Author(s): Lucio Vinhas de Souza / Language(s): English

Russia is now once again one of the ten largest economies in the world (representing around 70% of Germany’s GDP in purchasing power parity in 2007). In addition, Russia is the third largest trading partner of the EU, the fourth largest trade partner of the eurozone and an essential energy supplier to the EU. This recovery makes Russia an economic – and political – actor that cannot be ignored. In this authoritative new book, Lúcio Vinhas de Souza, desk officer for Russia in the Directorate–General for Economic and Financial Affairs of the European Commission, reviews the country’s evolving macroeconomic performance and structural policy framework, from the difficult days of the recession in the early transition period and the 1998 crisis to Russia’s sustained and robust growth since 1999. He outlines the remaining reform priorities in Russia and concludes with pragmatic policy recommendations for the reform agenda.

A kárpátaljai magyar szórvány típusai, tagolási lehetőségei

Author(s): Patrik Tátrai / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 3/2020

The Hungarian term “szórvány” (literally: diaspora, but its meaning can be interpreted as scattered minority communities in the majority population) has been used for a long time to differentiate transborder Hungarian communities according to their location and assimilation trajectories. Up until now only a few attempts have been made to group and typify communities labelled as “szórvány”. This is especially true for Transcarpathian, Ukraine, where those living as “szórvány” communities makes up approximately one quarter of the total Hungarian population of the region. However, the idea of “szórvány” is quite ambiguous, and there is no consensus on its exact definition. Based on both quantitative data analysis and qualitative methods (fieldworks since 2018), the present study aims at giving an overview about how the “szórvány” has been defined and differentiated in Transcarpathia and what the possible factors are that characterize the main types of there Scattered community cluster. We found that although the role of structural features like distance from the relatively contiguous Hungarian settlement area (“block”), ethnic proportions between majority and minority populations, rural-urban settings the allochthonous-autochthonous dichotomy and, local special characteristics are crucial to understanding differences in development paths.

A magyar kisebbséget képviselő pártok választási sikeressége (1990–2004)

Author(s): Alpár Zoltán Szász / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1-2/2006

The main goal of this paper is to examine how the institutional distribution of political power within the party system of a country affects the share of power that can be captured by a minority on national level. (Such an approach relies on the empirical observation that in most parts of the world ethnic/national minorities compete for /political/ resources through the parties that claim to represent them.) To accomplish its task, the paper draws on theories of comparative government and party system theory, while targeting–as sample–post-Communist countries bordering Hungary and featuring Hungarian minorities, i.e., Croatia, Romania, Serbia–Montenegro, Slovakia, Slovenia and Ukraine. Parties representing Hungarian minorities are analysed in order to provide a tentative institutional(ist) explanation of the electoral success of ethnoregionalist parties. The account focuses on systemic variables making up the participation dimension of political systems, more precisely, the nature of the electoral system (used for electing the lower chamber of national legislatures) and party system format. Apart from delineating a theoretical framework that helps to disentangle the relationship between the three variables, the paper offers a (new) definition of ethnoregionalist parties, too, as a means for delimiting their larger―for instance, all-European―universe. Moreover, it presents the theoretical basis of a triple test designed for (dis)proving the ethnoregionalist character of political organisations and performs it on twenty-eight Hungarian political organisations to show that only twenty-one qualify as ethnoregionalist (parties). Finally, the paper concludes that party system fragmentation is indeed a salient factor of ethnoregionalist electoral success. However, the quantitative method employed herein failed to confirm the strong, expected theoretical relationship between electoral system proportionality and the dependent variable. Hence, the paper hints, as directions for future research, to other possibilities for exploring the latter relationship.

A MAN IN THE SPOTLIGHT: OLEG PENKOVSKY AND HIS ALLEGIANCE TO THE WEST

Author(s): Alin Dreptate / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

Prior to the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, a GRU officer named Oleg Penkovsky attempted to contact the West multiple times. He did it to such an extent that initially he was regarded as a provocateur. After his recruitment, Penkovsky was handled by a joint team of CIA-MI6 team and provided information that compromised the Soviet intelligence operations in Western countries. He also helped identify the operational readiness of nuclear missiles deployed by the Soviets in Cuba. Officially, his role was in equal parts exaggerated and downplayed by the UK and the Soviet Union. The former sought to protect the sensitive information that was obtained, the latter attempted to limit the damage he caused. Conflicting accounts identified him as either a Soviets plant or as someone who saved the West and the world. This article presents the reasons that determined him to choose the West over his own country; it discusses some of the accusations he was subjected to, particularly those that claimed he was working for the Soviets the whole time he spied for the West. Finally, it attempts to explain the importance of the information provided prior to the Cuban crisis. All these arguments support the assessment that Penkovsky was a genuine spy who offered his services to the West.

A Matter of Pure Conscience? Franz Wieacker and his “Conceptual Change” [CRITIQUE]

Author(s): Tomasz Giaro / Language(s): English Issue: 82/2020

Based on a recent biography of Franz Wieacker (1908–1994) two central questions are examined. Is it allowed to analyze a young, but already prominent German law professor of the Nazi era as a pure scholar whose identity remained unchanged from the times of Weimar to the Federal Republic of Germany? Is it plausible to treat the Nazis as progenitors of current European legal history, and in particular as founding fathers of European legal tradition?

A New Culture of Truth? On the Transformation of Political Epistemologies since the 1960s in Central, Eastern, and South-Eastern Europe

Author(s): Friedrich Cain,Dietlind Hüchtker,Bernhard Kleeberg,Jan Surman / Language(s): English Issue: 17/2019

A politikai identitás

Author(s): Miklós Bakk / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 1-2/2006

The present article tackles the problem of political identity from a philosophical point of view, building on various theories of and contributions to specific (sub)disciplines within sociology, political science and discourse analysis. It is based primarily on the hermeneutical tradition, rather than on an analytical view of language. It puts forward a tri-polar model of political identity, based mainly on the We/They opposition and several conceptualisations of discursiveness. When developing this model I departed from Koselleck’s concept of “acting communities” and focused on the discursive aspects of the We/They opposition. Considering this opposition as being discursive, the paper presents a conception of political communities as communities that are continuously delimiting themselves by a beneficial combination of self-assertive actions and self-denominations, which are permanently related to what is seen from the point of view of the respective communities as ‘They’.

A PRUDENTIAL PERSONALIST ETHICAL APPRAISAL OF HUMAN CLONING

Author(s): Peter O.O. Ottuh / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2021

Numerous uncertainties are hanging over the biotechnology of human cloning which has prompted medical ethicists and religious organizations to ask questions that bordered on its ethical and religious considerations. In cloning humans, ethical and religious issues arise both in its clinical and laboratory settings hence, the morality of manipulating human genes is the foremost ethical issue among scientists and religious scholars. Therefore, this paper evaluated the human cloning technology using the personalism and prudential personalism ethical-religious models to arrive at a workable moral paradigm. To achieve this objective, the paper employed the phenomenological and critical-literary literature review methods. The paper argued that previous ethical and religious researches have not adequately employed the ‘ideal’ ethical models to appraise the morality of human cloning hence; using the personalism and prudential personalism ethical-religious models were appropriate to reveal that every human life has worth and its commodification is an aberration. The paper concluded that based on the paradigm of prudential personalist ethics, cloning humans (especially, human reproductive cloning) negates respect for human life, human dignity, and communal goods hence it should not be practiced.

A world transformed by climate justice

Author(s): Madita Standke-Erdmann,Alina Viehoff / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2020

What will the world look like in 2040 and how did we get there? How will climate change, one of, if not the most pressing issue of our times be tackled on a global scale? With these questions in mind, this article invites the reader to perform a thought experiment into the future. Following an imagined snapshot of the year 2040, the reader is guided through major global developments regarding climate change, social movements and, eventually, climate justice from the 2020s to 2040s. By imagining social, political and economic consequences of climate change and responses to them, this article paints a picture of what the future could look like if climate justice became a guiding principle in the struggle of mitigating the effects of climate change. Suggesting a paradigm shift from securitizing climate change to securing climate justice, this ‘future’ calls for a discursive turn of the manner in which climate change is thought of and acted upon. It requires different entities, including academia, to recognize their role as political actors within society. Consequently, it is crucial to reflect upon whose security is (not) considered but also which responses are taken into account in what way to mitigate security risks related to climate change. The article concludes that imagining a future of climate justice is pivotal to finding solutions to the challenges we are confronted with, that is, keeping the metaphoric ship from crashing into the cliffs.

ABD’deki Çin Diasporasının Oluşumuna Giden Yol

Author(s): Neslihan Topcu / Language(s): Turkish Issue: 1/2021

Diaspora can be defined as the communities that have a homeland and leave from their homeland to various places for various reasons, but maintain their connections with their homeland. This paper is discussed how the formation process of the Chinese diaspora in the USA took place. The paper consists of three parts. In the first part, the history of the formation process of the Chinese diaspora in the USA is explained. The second part examines the nature of the Chinese diaspora in the USA and how this quality has changed over time. The third part focuses on what kind of organizations exist between the Chinese diaspora and mainland China. Finally, in the conclusion part, a general evaluation of what is explained under three headings is presented.

ACADEMIC JOURNAL OF LAW AND GOVERNANCE

Frequency: 1 issues / Country: Romania

<p>The Academic Journal of Law and Governance (AJLG) marks a new starting point in Romanian and European research dedicated to public law and administrative sciences.</p> <p>The Academic Journal of Law and Governance (AJLG) intends to bring forward to the European and international academic scene, the efforts conducted by Romanian researchers and their European counterparts in investigating the developments in public law and administrative sciences with a clear focus on the European continent. Reflecting the diversity of the two fields of study, the Journal intends to publish peer-reviewed research articles, case and national studies that will grow the scientific knowledge on the European continent from both general and comparative points of view.</p> <p>The Academic Journal of Law and Governance (AJLG) is the official journal of the Romanian Academic Society of Administrative Sciences.</p>

Achieving the objectives of EU Cohesion Policy – the case of intra-regional disparities in Bulgaria

Author(s): Dimitar Hadjinikolov / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2020

This paper provides an analysis of intra-regional disparities in Bulgaria for the EU post-accession period. Bulgaria joined the EU together with Romania on 1 January 2007. In accordance with the EU legislation, six NACE 2 planning regions have been established – three in the southern part and three in the northern part of the country. All of them meet the requirements for receiving EU funding under the Cohesion Policy rules. The expectation was that EU founds would create a more favourable environment for pursuing an active and efficient Regional policy in Bulgaria. One of the goals of such a Regional policy should be the reduction of intra-regional disparities, particularly between the regions in the northern and in the southern part of the country. In order to determine whether this objective of the Regional policy has been achieved, changes in Mean Absolute Deviation (MAD) and in the Coefficient of Variation (CV) have been estimated. According to the findings in the paper, intra-regional differences in Bulgaria did not decline in the post-accession period, on the contrary they have in general increased. This is partly due to the concentration of EU funds in the more developed southern part of the country, especially in the capital Sofia. The concentration of funds can be illustrated by the development of the highway network in the southern part of Bulgaria. Intra-regional disparities have resulted in depopulation of the lagging regions.

Acta Musei Napocensis. Historica

Frequency: 1 issues / Country: Romania

<p>Acta Musei Napocensis is the scientific journal of the National Museum of Transylvanian History. It was first published in 1964, two years after the founding of the History Museum of Cluj. The Historica series covers a wide range of topics from various domains of medieval, modern, and contemporary history and heritage. The journal encourages original research papers, notes, discussions, and reviews, which reflect the results of scientific inquiries pertaining to history, archaeology, and history of art, along with topics of heritage care and museum education and learning.</p>

ACTUAL CHALLENGE IN INTERNATIONAL CORPORATE TAXATION: SHIFTING THE OBLIGATION OF CONDUCT INTO OBLIGATION OF RESULT

Author(s): Mihaela Tofan / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2022

The research answered whether cooperation in ruling corporate taxation, a traditional obligation of conduct of sovereign states, was undergoing profound transformation into the obligation of result. The analyzed topic was not whether the tax authorities want or should cooperate (which is answered per se), but rather how to appropriately respond to the international taxation requirements for strengthening the multilateral agreements. Tax authorities worldwide have expressed concerns about identifying efficient regulation, and the development of multilateral agreements to combat tax evasion was under long and often unproductive negotiation. The empirical analyses of relevant literature and jurisprudence helped formulate an opinion on the regulation’s efficiency in strengthening multilateral taxation. The need to change the nature of the state’s obligation to negotiate fiscal regulation was not mentioned explicitly in hard law. Still, it was indirectly supported by soft law instruments, such as state representatives’ continuous yet divergent dialogue and the approaches presented in the international courts’ jurisprudence. The consistent influence on the obligation to support developments in international law in corporate taxation was justified, given the limit when considering its conduct nature, compared to potential benefits generated by the obligation of result.

Adalékok a romániai magyar felsőoktatási stratégiához: demográfiai, oktatáspolitikai, nemzetpolitikai kihívások

Author(s): Márton Tonk / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2019

The purpose of this study is to analyse the current problems and challenges of Hungarian language education policy in Romania. A part of the challenges connected to Transylvanian Hungarian higher education are identical to those characteristics that the Romanian, or more generally the entire European system of university education reflects. Therefore, we briefly present some of the consequences and challenges of the so-called “Bologna Process” regarding higher education. Simultaneously, the special features of Transylvanian Hungarian higher education receives the attention of the larger part of our study. It focuses on the Hungarian language university education system, connected to kin-state policy, demographics and minority rights. What does the Transylvanian Hungarian minority and the higher education institutional system offer? The analyses can obviously not ignore the “topos” of the independent, Hungarian language state university and its dilemmas and challenges are also briefly presented in the study.

Addressing the Threat of Fraud and Corruption in Public Procurement: Review of State of the Art Approaches

Compendium

Author(s): Author Not Specified / Language(s): English

The present compendium of selected best practices addresses the threat of fraud and corruption from multiple perspectives, with the underlying purpose of providing practitioners from Romania and Greece with a set of state of the art approaches for addressing the threat of fraud and corruption in the complex multi-layered national public procurement systems. This publication is based on ideas presented at the international seminar EU's Financial Interests under Threat: New Approaches in Assessing the Risks from Public Procurement and EU Funds Fraud, organised on 31 October – 1 November 2013 in Sofia, with the support of the European AntiFraud Office (OLAF).

Administracja publiczna a bezpieczeństwo migrującej społeczności lokalnej pogranicza polsko-rosyjskiego

Author(s): Dariusz Jurczak,Anatolii Kibysh / Language(s): Polish Issue: 1/2021

The article presents public administration in the context of security of the migrating local community of the Polish-Russian borderland. The authors present public administration in sociological research, as well as social security of the local community, which is associated with migration. The most important issue in this article is the outline of the research project, in which representatives of public administration play a leading role in creation of the sense of security of the inhabitants of the studied region. The aim of the project is to determine the conditions related to the administration’s influence on the safety of the inhabitants of the Warmia-Mazury Province and the Kaliningrad Region. The outcomes of the preliminary research are presented in this article.

Afganistan – o lecție învățată sau un nou sindrom al eșecului american?

Author(s): Vasile Roman / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 1(35)/2022

An analysis of the twenty years of Western presence in Afghanistan is a subject full of subjectivism. To say that it was a victory or a failure is a risk y assumption. The risk must be taken only to identify a few lessons learned and to try to not repeat such behaviours. I was there twice, in 2005 and 2010, I analyzed the coalition actions, between 2008-2010 and I tried to understand what happened in the last 10. I can say that there we reactions with beneficial effects for the population but also were strategic mistakes that affected the Afghanistan as state. The context was different from stage to stage, the process was changed in relation with the personality of Western leaders and the results, over time, produced positive or negative changes in Afghanistan in relation to the cohesion of the actors’ strategies. It was more of a confrontation between western civilization and afghan culture than only an armed conflict, and the result showed us that the collective mentalities are able to overcome the power of technology