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In recent years, the trade policy of various countries has become an important topic, both for administration and business. The present paper aims at presenting the EU trade policy and some of its advantages and challenges.
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The article presents the results of an empirical study on the use of the term 'hybrid war' (and its analogs) in Bulgarian media. It is focused on the use of the concept in meanings and contexts different from those implied by the existing definitions. The study covers the first five months of 2019. The publications in Bulgarian online media are selected through the news aggregation and analysis system 'European Media Monitor' (EMM). The results show that, in certain cases, the concept is not only used with different meanings, but some derivative concepts are created by the media such as 'hybrid propaganda' or 'hybrid content'
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National and international corruption indices suggest that the Bulgarian tax administration has an important role to play in fighting corruption. While the general public and the business community are inclined to think better of the tax administration, in terms of the levels and spread of corruption, by comparison with other institutions, such as customs, the police or the judiciary, corruption in the tax administration is still admittedly rather high. Business largely believes that most, if not all, tax officers are involved in corruption. Over the last five years, one out of five businesses on average has come under corruption pressure at the hands of tax officers. While they would not go as far as to accept the taxpayers’ perception of the situation, members of the tax administration do not deny the problem. They see the administration’s functional areas for Tax Audit and Operational Control as worst affected in terms of, respectively, the amounts of money changing hands and the frequency of such transactions. International surveys are inconclusive about the level of corruption in the Bulgarian tax administration on a comparison basis. The World Economic Forum rates it as relatively low within the enlarged European Union. By contrast, the World Bank has found it to be higher than corruption levels in most of the Balkans and the former Soviet republics. The purpose of this study is not primarily to add another estimate of the level and scale of tax corruption in Bulgaria but rather, to contribute to an in-depth diagnosis of the phenomenon in terms of its drivers at work in individual and institutional behaviour.National and international corruption indices suggest that the Bulgarian tax administration has an important role to play in fighting corruption. While the general public and the business community are inclined to think better of the tax administration, in terms of the levels and spread of corruption, by comparison with other institutions, such as customs, the police or the judiciary, corruption in the tax administration is still admittedly rather high. Business largely believes that most, if not all, tax officers are involved in corruption. Over the last five years, one out of five businesses on average has come under corruption pressure at the hands of tax officers. While they would not go as far as to accept the taxpayers’ perception of the situation, members of the tax administration do not deny the problem. They see the administration’s functional areas for Tax Audit and Operational Control as worst affected in terms of, respectively, the amounts of money changing hands and the frequency of such transactions. International surveys are inconclusive about the level of corruption in the Bulgarian tax administration on a comparison basis. The World Economic Forum rates it as relatively low within the enlarged European Union. By contrast, the World Bank has found it to be higher than corruption levels in most of the Balkans and the former Soviet republics. The purpose of this study is not primarily to add another estimate of the level and scale of tax corruption in Bulgaria but rather, to contribute to an in-depth diagnosis of the phenomenon in terms of its drivers at work in individual and institutional behaviour.
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The continuing conflict between Russia and Ukraine, together with the increased tension in relations between Russia and the West, have led the Belarusian authorities to attempt to redefine their country’s foreign policy by stressing neutrality towards the two sides in the conflict. As a result, over the last year or so Belarus has clearly adopted a non-committal stance. Minsk is trying to play the part of a neutral mediator in the hope that this will safeguard it in the event of escalation of tensions between Russia and the West, which is seen as the greatest threat to the country’s security at the present time. Thus Minsk is returning to the notion, discussed in the early 1990s, of Belarus striving for neutrality. Officially, the goal of neutrality is still stated in the Belarusian Constitution. However there are serious limitations to the effectiveness of this new strategy, due to Minsk’s close military alliance with Moscow, and therefore Belarus will not be entirely credible on the international stage as a country that wishes to remain neutral.
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The subject of this study is the evolution of British public policy between 1900 and 2010 with to the special focus on budgetary, monetary and social policy, as well as policy towards the public sector. This period was characterized by a steady, yet non-linear rise in economic and social activity of the state. Sudden increases were caused by one of three categories of events: wars, economic crises and changes at the highest levels of government. As a result, the history of British public policy in between 1900 and 2010 is divided into the following stages: 1) 1900-1931 - decline of the liberal era; 2) 1931-1951 - steady increase in the state's economic activity; 3) 1951-1979 - systemic stabilization at a high level of state involvement in economic and social issues; 4) 1997-2007 - attempt to return to economic liberalism; 5) 2007-2010 - a period of volatility and the search for new public policy principles.
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The Belarusian opposition is currently experiencing its deepest crisis since Alyaksandr Lukashenka took power in 1994. Following many months of negotiations, opposition leaders failed to select a joint candidate for the presidential election scheduled for 11th October. The failure of this latest round of talks has proven that not only is the opposition unlikely to threaten Lukashenka’s rule; it will not even be able to demonstrate to society that it could provide a genuine alternative to the present government.The presidential election in 2010 was a painful landmark for the opposition. The repression that accompanied the election has largely weakened political circles opposed to the government. Against this backdrop, the traditional internal problems of the opposition have worsened, such as its incapacity to reach agreement and develop a common, coherent operational strategy, the excessive ambitions of the leaders of particular groups, the low level of political maturity, mutual distrust and frequent personal conflicts. As a result the opposition has for years been unable to gain confidence in society and reach beyond the limited number (20%) of staunch proponents of democratic transformations. Given the fact that the Belarusian opposition is fragmented and lacks one clear leader, the readiness to support individual leaders does not exceed several per cent, according to independent surveys. Lukashenka’s present political opponents rather resemble a group of dissidents, than constitute a genuine opposition to the government. The crisis and helplessness of opposition circles are more acute given Belarus’s internal situation since for the first time Alyaksandr Lukashenka will run his presidential campaign in the context of the economic crisis and a forecasted fall in GDP.
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In Japan, “Pointing and Calling” is a known safety management method that is used to prevent mistakes and ensure safety. This study constructed a new check system, “Verification Meeting/ Simple Verification Meeting”, that is based on the Pointing and Calling system and aims to prevent incorrect cost estimations for projects of public works. It also contributes to improved staff morale and professional development. The new check system has five novel items compared with conventional verification methods of cost estimation. The proposed system was put into actual use in Japan, during which time necessary improvements were made. As a result, no mistakes in cost estimation were noted for about three years at the Port and Harbor Bureau of a city in Japan, where the first author of this article worked. The system was further refined and could be adapted for use by all local governments, including those with few staff members.
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The study of the global and local aspects of Bulgaria’s possible future entry into the Eurozone is partly based hereunder on the study of the evolution of the Polish, Estonian, Lithuanian and other strategies for joining the Eurozone. The reason for that is that there are fewer analyzes of the Bulgarian situation, which is still unfolding. The Polish, Estonian, Lithuanian and other cases overtake the Bulgarian one for several years. Therefore, in some places, the text below is a compilation of texts of research articles on these close cases. Poland is the largest economy among the New Accession countries in the EU. Estonia and Lithuania are small economies but used to have currency board arrangements before adopting the euro exactly as the plans for Bulgaria are. Moreover, all these countries were part of the Eastern bloc unlike Greece and this makes them useful examples. Of course, there are also historical, cultural, political and economic differences that also need to be highlighted.
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On 24 August 1991, the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR proclaimed independence, and on 1 December the same year, the Ukrainian people ratified that proclamation in a referendum. The new Ukrainian state had some very important assets, such as the peaceful path that led to its independence, the fact that its territory was uncontested and its civilian administration was established. They downside, which determined Ukraine’s fundamental weaknesses, was that like the other former Soviet republics, it had been part of the Soviet state and had no central state bodies of its own, such as a general staff, a bank of issue, or most of the necessary ministries. After nearly a quarter century of peaceful development, interrupted by the outbreak of the war in 2014, Ukraine is still weak, but at the same time it has consolidated internally and internationally, demonstrated its capacity to withstand armed aggression, and is actively looking for its place in the world. The country’s greatest success has been to raise a new generation of ‘natural-born citizens’ of Ukraine, while its greatest failure has been to succumb to the dramatic population decline with irreversible consequences, and to allow the impoverishment of the lower strata of society, typical for all the post-Soviet states. The present paper is not a history of independent Ukraine, but an attempt to present the main mechanisms by which the former Soviet republic has transformed itself into an independent state with a market economy. It is therefore mainly focused on internal developments in Ukraine.
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Although in the 1990s the Russian Far East was not an important region in Russian central government’s internal policy, when Vladimir Putin assumed the presidency it was declared strategically significant. However, Moscow has been unable to generate a tangible stimulus to the region’s development so far. This is partly due to the systemic problems existing in Russia as a whole: the lack of a consistent concept of economic development and the ineffective governance system, and on the other hand, of purely local barriers: staffing problems, the decentralised energy system and the limited engagement of foreign investors. At present, there is no risk of the region’s marginalisation like in the 1990s. However, it appears that political reintegration of the region with the centre of the federation (tighter institutional control from Moscow) and the status of a stable raw material base for Asian countries, currently represents the maximum development potential of the Russian Far East.
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The purpose of this study is to assess the implementation of balanced scorecard in the offices of Trade and Industry Development, Micro and Small Scale Enterprise Development and Finance and Economic Development Bureaus of Addis Ababa City Administration. To collect and analyze data this study employed both quantitative and qualitative method using variables such as strategy setting, implementation of the change initiatives performance measurement, leadership, management and staff commitment. The findings show that though there have been positive achievements, the leaders and organizers of the change initiatives have not yet fully discharged their responsibilities of using strategic measures and customer service standards as performance measurement and management tool. Moreover, the actions taken in monitoring and evaluation is not satisfactory. The feedbacks did not go beyond awareness creation, and they are not being consistently utilized as an input for any administrative and corrective measures. Though the leaders made efforts, the city administration had to play a leading role in supporting the implementation of the change initiatives to bring the desired changes in the sectors.
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The concept of abuse of rights is universal in nature and is present in all branches of law. The development of scholarly opinion and jurisprudence led in time to the introduction of the prohibition on abuse of rights as a general principle of administrative law, understood as a ban on the use of rights or powers in a manner inconsistent with the purposes for which they were established or in violation of constitutional and axiological order. This paper is a presentation of a model that describes basic characteristics of abuse of right in administrative law. These basic characteristics can be summarized in a few theses as follows: (1) subjective variability – prohibition of abuse applies to both the authority as well the individual; (2) strong links between abuse and circumvention of law – abuse of right is often aimed at avoiding the application of those norms of administrative law which the individual considers to be disadvantageous to her/him; (3) different legal basis of the prohibition of abuse – general principles of law (e.g. the principle of good faith), specific regulations referring to specific powers, immanent limits of the powers or the right; (4) “axiological entanglement” – links with universal, basic administrative law values: legality, rule of law, certainty, justice and common good; (5) vague boundaries and casuistic nature, making it difficult to formulate generalized conclusions, especially with regard to the consequences of abuse of right.
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Access to public information in Poland is most typically discussedin the legal and political contexts. However, it is not consciouslydiscussed as a possibility for political scholars to exercise their right ofaccess to public information. This paper, which is of postulatory nature,identifies the benefits for those political scholars who decide to use, inthe process of data collection, their right of access to public informationas a data collection technique. The proposed technic of data collectionmay be used by scholars – political scientists around the world.
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The authors devote an ample study to the issue of access to the legal norms, which also includes a number of conclusions resulted from a critical analysis of the situation. Equality before the law, a fundamental human right, might not be effective unless the persons have sufficient knowledge about the norms that are applicable to them and the adequate means to become aware of the norms. The critical and sophisticated form of the legal norm might be an obstacle against understanding the text. At the same time, the legal norm is not easily accessible because of the inflation of texts and the successive amendments. Clarity requires coherence of the various texts, which is the reason why a presentation of the legislation within a systematic ensemble is indispensable. The authors also emphasize on the importance of a free-of-charge access to the website of the Official Gazette for all the natural persons in Romania and the Romanian citizens from abroad.
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This paper aims to highlight the activity that the rural Gendarmerie had in Cluj County between 1929-1938 in terms of ensuring public order, prevention, detection and investigation of crimes, in our very useful approach being the newsletters that included the description of events. This research is based on original documents found in the institution of National Archives of Romania. We emphasize that for the analyzed period, the Police and the Gendarmerie had different attributions compared to the institutions with the same name at present. Thus, the Police had competences only in urban areas, while the activity of police in rural areas belonged to the Gendarmerie, so the activity of police was divided in urban police and rural police. Against the background of the world crisis of 1929-1933 and the evolution of the international events, the Gendarmeria had to respond to its responsabilities in rural areas with undersized people.
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The optimal size of government or the public sector in general has been the topic of many studies and debates all over the world. There are some who state that the public sector should play a much greater role in the economy, while others proclaim the private economy is a much better placed to generate the desired economic outcomes. This article investigates this issue and applies it to South Africa as there is no consensus on the optimal size of the South African government. The reporting formats of the National Treasury and South African Reserve Bank (SARB) were used to define the public sector, and estimate its actual size and contribution to the country’s economy. The research period ranges from 1992 to 2017. In theory, the BARS or Armey curve suggests that there exists an inverted U shape association between the size of government and optimal economic growth, and that was tested. Various regression equations were assessed using the fully modified OLS (FMOLS) estimation technique. The optimum level of the public sector size is estimated to be between 18 and 24% of the economy, which compares to the current level of between 30 and 50%, while optimal levels were experience between 2005 and 2007. The results suggest that the size of the South African public sector is significantly larger than optimal.
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Compendium
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).
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Croatian population and, consequently, Croatian labour force is rapidly ageing. With ageing comes the change in abilities e.g. decreasing productivity and declining cognitive ability. In the modern world, new applications of technologies transform requirements of jobs, thus workers have to adjust to those novelties. The problem is that older workers are ‘digital immigrants’ who started using a Personal Computer (PC) later in their lives, often during employment, so they had to change their approach to work i.e., they had to adjust to different requirements of today’s jobs. Required adjustments accompanied by decreasing abilities may lead to early retirement. The authors have investigated the influence of 1) the need to adjust to the requirements of today’s jobs (approximated by requirements to use a PC) and 2) the ability to adjust to the requirements of today’s jobs (approximated by ratings of PC skills) on early retirement intentions of population aged 50+ employed in the Croatian public sector. A logistic regression model in the context of complex samples was created by the authors, whereby both analysed variables were found to be related to the early retirement intentions. Finally, those who were required to use a PC and thus to adjust to changes were more likely to want to retire early than employees who did not have the same obligation. Those with low PC skills, i.e. employees whose ability to adjust was low, were also more likely to retire early than those who have adjusted better.
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Government administration, both central and municipal, creates a system that is a result of solutions introduced many years ago, and then changed or refined. The Constitution defines the nature of the state, political system, legal system and relationship between the institutions of power. State law is based on the Constitution, the Constitution provides undisturbed peace in the implementation of its provisions. State institutions through its activities protect constitutional order. In this context, here are two principles that ensure safety – the principle of legality and the rule of law stability. Hence, all the institutions and legal persons are responsible for the security of the state according to the provisions of the Constitution.
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The subject of the analysis in the article is the participation of the local government administration in running a cultural institution. The situation in the Podlaskie voivodship 100 Cezary Mielko Studia z Polityki Publicznej has been analyzed on a nationwide basis. The main problems focus on the principles and methods of financing cultural institutions by regional self-government and various ways of obtaining additional, extra-budgetary funding for their activities, especially from Ministry of Culture and National Heritage and the European Union. The author points to spatial, social, and financial diversification related to the access to cultural events and participation in them using the example of Podlaskie voivodship. He propounds greater professionalisation related to running cultural institutions at the level of the voivodship as well as conducting pro-development cultural policy by local government units. He also stresses the need for activating local and regional communities in connection with cultural events and participation in organizing them. Participation in culture at the local and regional level and prudent government policy in this area are the foundation for building a strong social and regional identity.
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