![The (Re-)Emergence of Constitutionalism in East Central Europe](/api/image/getbookcoverimage?id=document_cover-page-image_424955.jpg)
The goal of the paper is to denote the fundamental questions and problems of the (anthropological) interpretation of post socialism, commencing from its initial moment, that is, the identification of the event that indicates the establishment of transition as a social, political and cultural process. After assessing the circumstances of interpreting transition as a change of a global nature, particular consideration will be focused upon the local: how, principally in the Croatian social and humanist sciences, the question of "shift" is being reproduced considering the idiosyncrasies of the Yugoslav socialism.
More...Keywords: neoliberal authoritarianism; financial crisis; embedded neoliberalism; illiberalism
This work thematises the new paradigm of authoritarianism in Hungary. It contains three parts. The first part is dealing with the context of financial crisis in 2008, and the crisis-ridden ramifications regarding Hungary. The second part concerns the phenomenology of authoritarianism including the transformation of the functions of Constitutional Court or the modifying of the checkbalance system of politics. The third part depicts the phenomenology of the national capitalism in Hungary with the account of such political measures as flat tax. In contrast to the usual analysis this work develops an argumentation that: a) explains the authoritarianism as a response to the crisis of embedded neoliberalism in Hungary during the last decade, b) instead of the frequently used populism emphasizes the strong connection amongst neoliberalism, authoritarianism, and neoconservativism. The relatively specific national neoliberalism burdened with the authoritarian patterns of employment and work could throws light on the illiberal tendencies within the paradigm connected to the political figure of Victor Orban.
More...Keywords: Uwe Timm; bicycle; velocipede; literature
PL: Tekst analizuje niemieckojęzyczną powieść Uwego Timma Der Mann auf dem Hochrad z 1984 roku o pionierze jazdy na welocypedzie z prowincjonalnego miasteczka Coburg na tle przemian społeczno-obyczajowych i rozwoju technologii na przełomie XIX i XX wieku. Autorka proponuje nowe odczytanie figury welocypedu w powieści Timma, nie jako narzędzia służącego krytyce postępu technologicznego, lecz jako metonimię literatury. W tym celu włącza do swoich rozważań kontekst poetologicznych i autobiograficznych rozważań Uwego Timma zawartych m.in. w tomach Erzählen und kein Ende. Versuche zu einer Ästhetik des Alltags (1993) i Von Anfang und Ende. Über die Lesbarkeit der Welt (2009). EN: The text analyzes Uwe Timm’s German-language book Der Mann auf dem Hochrad (Man on a Velocipede, 1984), about a pioneering ride on a velocipede from the provincial town of Coburg, set against the background of the social and moral changes and technological advancements that took place at the turn of the twentieth century. The author proposes a new reading of the velocipede in Timm’s novel, not as a tool for criticising technological progress, but as a metonym of literature. For this purpose, he includes in his deliberations poetological contexts and the autobiographical reflections of Uwe Timm found in, among other places, the books Erzählen und kein Ende. Versuche zu einer Ästhetik des Alltags (1993) and Von Anfang und Ende. Über die Lesbarkeit der Welt (2009).
More...Keywords: corruption;Network culture;Brokers;institutionalized crime;Orbán family;
Network culture and related informal institutions are widespread phenomena in Central and Eastern Europe (CEE). The network character suggests that not only two but many interconnected actors participate in informal exchanges and circulate different forms of resources through this widespread social infrastructure. Under the communist shortage economy,informal networks were important survival tools for everyday citizens to“get things done.” The relationship structure of family members, friends,acquaintances, ex-classmates, colleagues, and neighbors provided effective channels to obtain different forms of resources, from travel vouchers through home phones and cars to university admissions. Of course, these types of informal networks existed and still exist all around the world but in communist CEE countries they were more widespread compared to their Western counterparts.
More...Keywords: Serbia; prison; Sombor; KPZ; quality of life; security; lawfulness; social resettlement; outside world contact; personnel;
The personnel shall be permanently encouraged to upgrade their knowledge and professional capacity through examples of positive management and by attending courses of inservice training, additional training, counselling, etc; The personnel should be trained to deal with special categories of prisoners or specialists should be engaged for the purpose; On selection and recruitment of the staff their personal suitability for the job should be primarily taken into account; At least one women officer should be employed full-time in the security service; More people should be employed full-time in the reformative training service with a view to enabling the existing staff to fully dedicate themselves to the prisoners' reformative training; admission procedures, therefore, should be entrusted to newly admitted professionals who would consult the existing staff whenever necessary; If appropriate to the prison's needs, more people should be engaged full-time in the training and employment service so as to avoid frequent overtime and thus improve relationship among the prison staff; Conditions of life and work of the prison personnel should be improved by providing more adequate salaries and employment benefits in view of the exacting nature of the work.
More...Keywords: agricultural cooperatives; governance; organizational changes;
This paper analyzes the changes in the governance of agriculture cooperatives in Bulgaria. The researcher team put focus on external and internal mechanisms that influence organizational design of the cooperatives: market turbulence; destructive competition; participation of members in decision-making process; abuse of power resource by the Chairman; professionalizing of governance bodies; a change the goals. The team summarizes the empirical findings and claimed that the governance of Bulgarian agricultural cooperatives increasingly changing from the traditional cooperative model.
More...Keywords: regional growth; optimal control theory; optimal growth
Optimal growth and allocation of investment across spatial units - that is to say regions, constitute two major applications of the Optimal Control Theory in regional economics and economic geography. This chapter provides a detailed examination of the process through which the path of optimal regional growth and the allocation of investment can be determined within the framework of Optimal Control Theory. This theory describes the process of maximizing a given objective function. When the focus is set upon a spatial economy, the objective function may include a single aim - such as maximizing aggregate growth. Nevertheless, it is possible to detect cases in which the objective function includes two different, even competitive aims: promotion of aggregate growth and interregional equity. This case is also examined in this chapter.
More...Keywords: Harr à Trous wavelet; neural network; back propagation; crude oil price forecasting; activation function; input-hidden nodes
Oil price prediction has usually proved to be an intractable task, due to the intrinsic complexity of the oil market mechanism. In addition, the recent oil shock and its consequences re-launch the debate on understanding the behavior underlying the expected oil prices. Combining the dynamic properties of multilayer back propagation neural network and the recent Harr à Trous wavelet decomposition, a Hybrid model HTW-MPNN is implemented to achieve prominent modeling of crude oil price. While recent studies focus on the determination of the best model by comparing various neural architectures or applying several decomposition techniques to the ANN, the new insight of this chapteris to target the issue of the transfer function selection. Based on the work of authors Yonaba H. Anctil F. and Fortin, V., from the year 2010 “Comparing Sigmoid Transfer Functions for Neural Network Multistep Ahead Stream flow forecasting”(published in the Journal of Hydrologic Engineering, April, 275-283), we use three variants of activations function namely sigmoid, bipolar sigmoid and hyperbolic tangent in order to test the model’s flexibility. Furthermore, the forecasting robustness is checked through several levels of input-hidden nodes. Comparatively, simulation results of Hybrid model performs better than the conventional BPNN.
More...Keywords: Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA); context-dependent DEA; effectiveness; efficiency; perceived quality
Operational effectiveness goes beyond efficiency while it incorporates exogenous variables, non-controllable by the service units. Effectiveness is a fundamental driver for the success of an operational unit within a competitive environment. In this context, we seek to identify the active units that meet both the high or technical efficiency and the perceived high quality criteria. We also aim to develop a roadmap for effectiveness for every operational unit and we consider the feasibility of the results produced by the effectiveness assessment process in the short run. The target values uncovered by comparative optimization techniques (e.g. Data Envelopment Analysis) for efficiency and effectiveness measurement generally have limited managerial implications due to production constraints, available resources, and legal status. This chapter introduces a modified Quality-driven –Efficiency-adjusted Data Envelopment Analysis (MQE-DEA) model to assess effectiveness and provide a step-by-step path to achieve high quality and high efficiency in every operational unit under evaluation. The MQE-DEA model has particular applicability to the effectiveness assessment of homogeneous service units in which an inverse relationship underlies the two dimensions of effectiveness embraced in this study (e.g. bank branches, restaurant chain stores, governmental onestop-shops).
More...