Keywords: democratic transition; identity; nation; ethno-nationalism; citizenship; multiculturalism; political elites; Serbia; autonomy of Vojvodina; constitutional changes
By structuring his analysis into four key segments (1) Nationrelated contradictions and identity ambiguities; (2) Identity policies and multiculturalism; (3) Transitional identity engineering in Serbia, and (4) Projections of the future and prospects of multicultural strategies, the author corroborates the following thesis: regardless of numerous challenges of multiculturalism and dramatic open issues concerning the economic and financial crisis, as well as the refugee crisis, the EU policies of identity (both national and European) cannot preserve the advantage of the existing and globally unique civilizational values, nor can they prove their effectiveness in the consolidation of the democracy and integration of transition societies if the power to define identity is acquired (or preserved) by xenophobes and ethno-nationalists. Instead of traditional notions and (ultra)conservative (anti-)politics, the crisis requires new ideasand strategies. Therefore, multiculturalism should be given a real chance.
More...Keywords: Europe; refugee crisis; Syria; Balkan route; EU-Turkey agreement; Hungary; borders; segregation;
Over the course of 2015, an estimated 1.5 million people – the bulk of them refugees from Syria – made their way from Greece to Western Europe via the Balkan route. The shift to this previously marginal route for irregular entry of refugees and migrants into the EU led to the collapse of the EU’s external border in the Aegean and turned the long-standing problem of the EU’s deficient common asylum policy, which disproportionately affected the southern member states, into a full-fledged crisis. This crisis was of the EU’s own making and could have been avoided with sufficient political will. If the international community had fully funded UNHCR’s Syria refugee response plan rather than providing just 35% of the requested budget in 2015, and if a few EU member states had been willing to resettle 2- 300,000 Syrians from Turkey, Lebanon, and Jordan, the EU most probably would not have seen more asylum-seekers in 2015 than in previous years. Instead, the Union’s Dublin system broke down. Following the reinstatement of internal borders in half a dozen member states, so did Schengen, amplified by additional ingredients: the weakness of Greece’s public administration; the fragility of asylum systems, administrative capacities, and democratic policing in the Western Balkans; and the authoritarian transformation of Hungary’s political system. As late as early autumn 2015, the refugee crisis was still fully manageable. The EU’s immediate response followed the playbook used in various crises from the eurozone crisis onwards – a combination of reactive German leadership supported by a coalition of willing member states. On September 4, Chancellor Merkel, supported by her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann, arranged with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for the transit of refugees and migrants from Hungary with the aim to avert an escalation of the situation in that country. Merkel assembled a coalition of willing states that accepted to receive the bulk of refugees and migrants and worked with the countries on the Balkan route to avoid regional tensions over the wave and to achieve an initial smooth transit free of major human rights violations. However, unlike in previous crises, Merkel’s attempt to shift from crisis management to a joint European policy failed. Merkel and the EU got stuck when a relocation scheme for 160,000 asylum seekers, approved later in September by a weighted majority of member states, provoked dissent from Robert Fico, Slovakia’s prime minister. Fico’s announcement (supported by other Central European countries) that Slovakia would not implement the scheme marked a turning point: with it, the EU in effect ceased to function as a rules-based entity in the field of refugee and asylum policy. A rise in subsequent unilateral measures by member states led to the gradual erosion and ultimate collapse of the coalition of the willing, with France, Sweden, and Austria defecting from it and abandoning their liberal asylum policies. Yet giving in to populist pressure still proved unsuccessful in mobilizing support from electorates: even in Slovakia, Fico’s party subsequently saw substantial losses to right-wing forces from which it had taken its antimigration rhetoric. At the same time, Merkel also came under domestic pressure for her liberal approach. In the absence of joint EU action, the receiving countries instead turned their attention to ways to reduce the flow of refugees and migrants through the Balkan route, even if that meant that the countries along the route would have to breaching domestic and international legal obligations. The countries on the Balkan route were now being held hostage by individual EU member states, first and foremost Austria. Vienna’s policy led in time to the complete closure of the route. The failure of the EU’s established crisis management revealed the core problem behind the refugee crisis: the EUs own unresolved internal problems which turned a manageable migration emergency into an existential issue for the EU. Merkel’s policy style – managerial, and averse to risks, broad strategies, and vision – had seen the EU through a decade of crises, but at the same time camouflaged the core of the Union’s weakness: the reluctance to address its structural challenges. In the end, this failure contributed to the erosion of internal legitimacy and joint action which greatly contributed to the UK’s sleepwalking out of the EU. In this change-averse environment, Merkel’s only remaining option was the desperate outsourcing of the EU’s refugee management to Turkey, sealed by the March 17 EU-Turkey refugee deal. There is both an irony and a political logic in the fact that the deal, which tied the refugee issue to the reanimation of Turkey’s EU accession and visa liberalization process, was a product of the policy of two member states – Germany and Austria – that for years had blocked Turkey’s EU bid. The deal stopped the flow of refugees and migrants across the Aegean Sea practically overnight. But in the medium and long term, it will inflict more collateral damage than it delivers in short-term benefits. First, by declaring Turkey a safe country for asylum-seekers – a legal sleight-of-hand to enable the return of those arriving on the Greek islands to Turkey – the EU has damaged its internal legitimacy as a Union based on liberal democratic values and rules, and endangered the internal enforcement of decisions and rules in all policy areas. Second, by offering Ankara progress on EU accession without internal agreement on Turkey’s eventual membership, the EU severely diminishes the transformative power of its enlargement policy and undermines pro-European, pro-reform Turks. Third, by outsourcing the management of the European refugee crisis to an increasingly authoritarian regime in Ankara while continuing to avoid addressing its own structural problems, the EU has made itself dependent on Turkey. This bodes ill for the EU’s ability to deal with future crises. The coup attempt in Turkey of July 15 and resulting political tensions between Ankara and Brussels have not substantially affected the refugee deal. But the Turkish government’s threat to re-open the gates to Europe and the hypocritical demands from within the EU to freeze Turkey’s EU accession process have highlighted some of its core deficiencies. In order to prevent long-term damage to the EU and mitigate the risk of a purely reactive response should the deal collapse, it is high time for the EU to develop a more sustainable Plan B for handling the refugee crisis, and to address the core structural problems which openly lurk behind it.
More...For six centuries the Slovenian lands had been the part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, which disintegrated aft er the WWI. According to the will of the Paris Peace Conference and the world super powers the majority of the Slovenian lands in 1918 entered the first Yugoslavia. Th e western part belonged to Italy and the west-northern part belonged to Austria. During the WWI in Slovenia (1941–1945) there were occupation, resistance, revolution, collaboration and the civil war. After the Axis attack on Yugoslavia on 6 April 1941, Slovenia was occupied by Italy, Germany and Hungary. After the Italian capitulation in September 1943, Germany added the Italian Slovenian territory into the Operational Zone Adriatic Littoral. After the German occupation of Hungary, the Third Reich occupied the whole of Slovenia. All three occupying countries had the same goal: to Italianize, Germanize and Hungarize the Slovenians and assimilate the occupied territories.
More...Keywords: financial stability; instability; banks and financial institutions; indicator; crisi
This chapter while emphasizing the importance of the concept of financial stability in wake of recent global financial crisis in particular and other (banking and financial) crises in general attempts to highlight the significance of the soundness of banking sector in emerging economies where banking sector constitutes a lion’s share in the financial system. This study investigates banking stability by structuring a recursive micro panel Vector Auto Regressive (VAR) model and corroborates the significance of the interrelatedness of the bank-specific variables such as; Liquidity, Asset Quality, Capital Adequacy and Profitability. This chapter while underscoring the prominence of financial stability in wake of recent global financial crisis in particular and other (banking and financial) crises in general argues that the soundness of banking sector in banking dominated financial system of emerging economies is of great significance in ensuring financial stability. Further, the chapter offers an in-depth review of literature on financial stability in backdrop of the ongoing definition debate for financial stability. A significant contribution of this study is in establishing that liquidity in the banking dominated financial system is reciprocally related with asset quality, capital adequacy, and profitability of constituent banks by employing a robust panel data drawn from 56 leading banks for a period of 12 years. Another contribution of this study is that, employing the most appropriate key determinants of banking sector soundness, the chapter models a simple and basic axiomatic form of banking stability index (BSI) in the context of an emerging economy banking sector.
More...Keywords: price stability; financial stability; inflation targeting policy; Romania
The price stability-financial stability relation is based on the assumption that both types of stability offer each other long-term support. These two concepts are not similar, although they are strongly connected. Price stability is an important condition for achieving financial stability. This chapter aims to present the opinion of the literature regarding these two concepts and the relationship between them and to analyze this relationship in Romania’s case. Romania is an open economy that faced many financial inflows in the post-communist era. It is important to see their impact on the Romanian financial and price stability and how the National Bank of Romania acted in this context.
More...Keywords: accounting; dual approach; data; analysis;
Economic theory says that economic policy instruments are used in order to achieve sustainable economic growth in the long term. Forecast of the future economic development would be prepared much easier if economic growth was constant. The reality is, however, not theory. As we can see, theworldwide growth is far from constant. As stated Romer (2012, p.6), “growth has been rising over most of modern history and average growth rate in the industrialized countries were higher in the twentieth century than in the nineteenth”. An exception to this scheme of increasing growth is slowdown in productivity growth. The globalisation of the world brought strong links between the economies of suchtrade and financial markets. Such close connection brings the acceleration of positive developments in the economy in "good times", while the same acceleration has signed an acceleration of negative developments in the economy in "bad times".
More...Keywords: strategy; company; management; development structure;
In terms of building an innovative economy, Kazakhstan enterprises face a problem, on the one hand, of a flexible, rapid response to the instability of the market environment, and on the other hand, the task of creating a long-term competitive policy for companies. One of the most effective ways to improve the management efficiency of a modern enterprise is the strategic management system.
More...Keywords: visa-free travel;
Visa liberalisation has been a crucial element in the EU’s relations with Romania, Serbia and Albania. Yet until recently it had not even appeared on the agenda of talks between Brussels and Ankara. Then on 21 June 2012, the Council invited the Commission to establish a dialogue with Turkey aimed at visa liberalisation. Almost a year has passed since these Council conclusions. The dialogue on visa liberalisation has yet to begin. || There has never before been an EU candidate country that had been negotiating accession for years and whose citizens were unable to travel without a visa. As Turkey and the EU move towards the fiftieth anniversary of their strategic relationship, which started with the 1963 Association Agreement, the time to overcome this particular legacy of the 1980 coup is now. It is time to cut this Gordian visa knot. || Cutting a Gordian knot: Solving an intractable problem through thinking outside the box. Based on legendary event in the ancient city of Gordiyon, 70 kilometers south-west of Ankara.
More...Keywords: Stefan Krukowski; Georgia; Gvardjilas Klde Cave; archaeology; Paleolithic
Critical edition of the unpublished text of Stefan Krukowski, one of the fathers of Polish archaeology, regarding his research on the cave site in Georgia in 1916. The book, edited in Russian, Polish, Georgian and English, consists of the introductory part (consisting Krukowski’s biography, history of research in the site under discussion and of the research on the Paleolithic in Georgia in general), of the text of Krukowski and accompanying illustrations, as well as of the separate modern tables with drawings and photos of the artifacts. Stefan Krukowski, born in 1890, a loner who never completed secondary school or went to university, a Polish rescarcher of the Palaeolithic, founder of a research school, an inspiring teacher of many Polish prehistorians, arrived in Georgia in May of 1916. He explored caves and rock shelters for two years in the foothills. The monograph on the Gvardjilas Klde Cave was written over 1000 years ago, yet the analyses it contains might just as well have been written by a contemporary archaeologist. The history of European archaeology might have taken a completely different path in this publication had been published in 1918, as Stefan Krukowski had planned.
More...Keywords: quality of life;quality management;product and service quality;quality management system;ISO 9000;ISO 9001;ISO 9004;sustained success;excellence models;process management;industrial management system;
1. Risk and business continuity management – essence and objectives. 2. Systematic solutions in risk and business continuity management. 3. Practical aspects of risk and business continuity management. 3.1. Implementation of a business continuity management system. 3.2. Risk and business continuity management – research results. 3.3. Quality management as a tool for risk management.1. Quality of life. 2. Product and service quality. 3. Quality management system. 3.1. ISO 9000. Quality management systems. Fundamentals and vocabulary. 3.2. ISO 9001. Quality management systems. Requirements. 3.3. International standard. ISO 9004. Managing for the sustained success of an organization – a quality management approach. 4. Correspondence between quality management systems and excellence models. 5. Process management. 5.1. Process management. 5.2. Business process management. 5.3. Essence of a process and process management. 5.4. Identification of processes and graphic modeling. 5.5. Business process modeling. 5.6. Business process models. 5.7. Standardization in process management. 6. Industrial management systems. 6.1. ISO 20000 – IT services management system. 6.2. Quality management systems in medical industry. 6.3. Quality assurance for supplies in aerospace industry on the basis of the AS9000 standards. 6.4. Systematic quality management for telecommunications industry suppliers on the basis of TL 9000. 6.5. Normative basis for quality management in automotive industry. 6.6. NATO requirements within the scope of quality management.
More...Keywords: Holocaust;Polish Jewish history;USSR;
More...Objectives: - To emphasize the fundamental factors of business internationalization - To study the four strategies of business internationalization - To analyse the stages of business development at international level - To understand the modes of entry into foreign markets
More...Keywords: women;
More...Keywords: 2015 migration crisis; Turkey and EU; Turkey and migration; Balkan-Route;
Over the course of 2015, an estimated 1.5 million people – the bulk of them refugees from Syria – made their way from Greece to Western Europe via the Balkan route. The shift to this previously marginal route for irregular entry of refugees and migrants into the EU led to the collapse of the EU’s external border in the Aegean and turned the long-standing problem of the EU’s deficient common asylum policy, which disproportionately affected the southern member states, into a full-fledged crisis. As late as early autumn 2015, the refugee crisis was still fully manageable. The EU’s immediate response followed the playbook used in various crises from the eurozone crisis onwards – a combination of reactive German leadership supported by a coalition of willing member states. On September 4, Chancellor Merkel, supported by her Austrian counterpart Werner Faymann, arranged with Prime Minister Viktor Orbán for the transit of refugees and migrants from Hungary with the aim to avert an escalation of the situation in that country. Merkel assembled a coalition of willing states that accepted to receive the bulk of refugees and migrants and worked with the countries on the Balkan route to avoid regional tensions over the wave and to achieve an initial smooth transit free of major human rights violations.
More...Keywords: Image; image research; discourse analysis; constructivism; methods of image researches
The method of discursive image analysis realized on the empirical material was presented in this chapter. It is AN authorial method of image research which combines social sciences research methods with linguistics methodological solutions. This chapter presents the aim of the method, the range of research subjects, material, elements of research procedure, analytical tools, capabilities and limitations of the method.
More...UKRAINE ON THE EVE OF ELECTION YEAR: PUBLIC DEMAND,POSITIONS OF POLITICAL ACTORS, OUTLINE OF THE NEW GOVERNMENT // UKRAINIAN SOCIETY ENTERING THE ELECTION YEAR // CITIZENS’ ATTITUDES TOWARDS POLICY ALTERNATIVES IN VARIOUS SPHERES // THE STRUCTURE OF POLITICAL COMPETITION AND SUBSTANTIVE ASPECTS OF 2019 ELECTION CAMPAIGNS // POLITICAL LEADERS ON THE UPCOMING ELECTIONS AND THE COUNTRY’S PROSPECTS // THE 2019 PRESIDENTIAL AND PARLIAMENTARY ELECTIONS: EXPERT INTERVIEWS // THE UKRAINIANS ABOUT THE GOVERNMENT, STATE POLICY AND ELECTIONS: FOCUS GROUP DISCUSSIONS // POLITICAL PARTIES OF UKRAINE, IDEOLOGIES AND POLICIES: THE EXPERT SURVEY
More...Keywords: diathesis; stative predicates; passives; middles; anticausatives; reciprocals; optatives
The investigation is intended to provide a clear distinction between the category of grammatical voice in Bulgarian (grammatical diatheses) and lexical diatheses by analyzing grammatical facts and by applying semantic criteria. The category of (grammatical) voice is used to describe a wide range of phenomena. Only the lexical diatheses are presented in more detail: se passives, impersonal passives, middles, anticausatives, lexical reciprocals, optatives, impersonal optatives, property of “oblique” subject. The semantic and grammatical characteristics (arguments and semantic roles, verb aspect, transitivity, and morphological categories of the verb lemma) of the source and derivative diatheses are studied, compared, and described. A large number of the source diatheses affect imperfective verbs that may express activities or states; in such cases, the alternations may lead to one of the following configurations: activity – activity; activity – state; state – state. We trace the correlation between the diathesis type and the eventuality type in the context of the ontological description of the state predicates proposed in this study. The investigation is intended to provide a clear distinction between the category of grammatical voice in Bulgarian (grammatical diatheses) and lexical diatheses by analyzing grammatical facts and by applying semantic criteria. The category of (grammatical) voice is used to describe a wide range of phenomena. Only the lexical diatheses are presented in more detail: se passives, impersonal passives, middles, anticausatives, lexical reciprocals, optatives, impersonal optatives, property of “oblique” subject. The semantic and grammatical characteristics (arguments and semantic roles, verb aspect, transitivity, and morphological categories of the verb lemma) of the source and derivative diatheses are studied, compared, and described. A large number of the source diatheses affect imperfective verbs that may express activities or states; in such cases, the alternations may lead to one of the following configurations: activity – activity; activity – state; state – state. We trace the correlation between the diathesis type and the eventuality type in the context of the ontological description of the state predicates proposed in this study.
More...Keywords: history; methodology; historiography;
It seems slightly egocentric to write about how you wrote your own book, and I also wonder if such a contribution would even interest anyone. It was only at the repeated urging of my esteemed colleague, Jiří Suk (whose books always become bestsellers), that I set myself to this task. Perhaps the mere mention of his name will attract some readers to a book consisting of several such egotistical texts.
More...Keywords: University Mathematics; PLATINUM; Inquiry-Based Mathematics Education; redefining teaching;
This chapter addresses the conceptual background underpinning PLATINUM, a project in the EU Erasmus+ programme. PLATINUM focuses on teaching and learning in university mathematics and particularly on IBME, Inquiry-Based Mathematics Education, involving mathematics teaching and learning and their development through the use of inquiry-based processes.
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