Around the Bloc: Poison Letters Put Czech Police on Alert, Russian Loan for French Nationalists
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Plus, Georgia and her allies decry Russia-Abkhazia pact; Estonia opens its e-government platform to the world.
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This interview with John Clarke investigates the actuality of the concept of authoritarian populism. This concept originally emerged from the works of Stuart Hall and his colleagues to describe Thatcherism, and the efficacy of this term was at stake in the debate between Stuart Hall and Bob Jessop in the 1980s. Moreover, the interview examines the relationship of authoritarian populism and neoliberalism, and explores the way in which this concept can contribute to the understanding of Brexit.
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This article reviews Jan Werner Müller’s What Is Populism?, one of the current bestsellers in the field of political science. In his book Werner Müller undertook the project of understanding the rise of anti-establishment political forces in Western democracies. While the book is grounded in current approaches of political theory, it is written in a style and with the goal to make it comprehensible for the wider public. In his argument Müller confronts democratic and populist claims for representation to prove that the latter threatens the freedom of modern political life. Consequently the book defines populism not only as an anti-liberal and anti-establishment phenomenon, but also as an anti-democratic one, which can be identified by its exclusionary, moral based political and social claim.
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Why does the quality of strategic decisions drop despite the increase of strategic projects in the public sphere? This study reveals the weaknesses of the traditional intuitive reductionistic understanding of strategizing that reduces it to long-term planning. A deductive concept derived from philosophical axiology is developed instead. Thus, from one point of view strategy appears as a supreme sense in the context of Kants' categorical imperative. When compared to the tactical and operational management, strategy proves to be a value-selected ideal for the distant future the common sense of which is being further developed in socially constructed more specific meanings that finally reach the state of end goals of strategic importance. All this creates the basis for a positive attitude towards the uncertainties used as opportunities rather than risks that should be avoided. The strategy is not a preliminary plan as usually considered but rather a permanent “cascade“ of rationalization of 1) the overall behaviour of organizations and 2) the process of optimizing the knots of constant problems specific to certain sectors of social life within the global environment of a certain historical period. On this basis, strategic goals’ nature is determined as well as the way they are formed, the process of strategic planning and 12 principles of strategic management, compliance with its performance and efficiency.
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The article defines the basic concepts of the theory of local government. The municipality is seen as a political community. The basic concepts of the role of municipal government are explained. The areas of competence and powers of local authorities in Bulgaria and the allocation of responsibilities between local and central government are analyzed. Special attention is paid to local finances and citizen participation in local government.
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The growing importance of regional policy in Europe, the economic crisis of recent years, the inevitable reforms in the EU more sharply raises questions about the effectiveness of regional policy and methods of its evaluation. In this paper it is examined the problems in elaboration of a systematic methodological framework for policy evaluation. The main challenges in policy evaluation of regional policy are related to its large range goals and the many different types of tools used. The choice of methodology for policy evaluation is related with the type of goals, type of tools and the different stages of the evaluation. Different methodologies are described altogether with evaluation of their advantages and disadvantages. It is considered that the only possible approach for elaborating adequate framework of evaluation of regional policy is through adaptation of the most commonly used models according to regional specifics and using integrated framework of evaluation that includes statistical, econometric and qualitative methods.
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This article studies the characteristics of the Russian-speaking community of the State of Israel. The author examines such aspects of the topic as the nature of the community ties that have taken shape among the Russian-speaking Israelis and the status of the Russian language in Israel. Attention is also paid to the factors that contributed to the formation of a unique Russian-Israeli identity, to the main stages of the evolution of the Russian-speaking community in the political life of Israel, and to the formation of the Russian media space. The Russian-speaking community is rightly regarded as a long-term phenomenon that is currently also an important player in the political arena of the country. The main contribution of this study is a comprehensive analysis of the phenomenon of the “Russian Israeli.” It argues that the following factors have been effective in the unification of the Russian-speaking community of Israel: territorial localization, the preservation of the cultural environment of the country of origin, the special status of the Russian language in Israel as well as its place in the media space, the maintenance of the symbols peculiar to the community, and the program of socio-political development.
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The old dilemma continues to incite the academic world and not only. Once with the Islamic movements’ revival, more than ever, it is speaking, with fear, about the avalanche of the Islamic civilization with all its aspects over the Western-European civilizations. Is this the true or it is, again, about a new witch hunting?
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The Bosnian War between 1992 and 1995 prepared proper conditions for political and economic reconstruction of Bosnia-Herzegovina in the disintegration process of Yugoslavia. After the war and great destruction, Bosnia-Herzegovina was reconstructed with the intervention of the USA and the Western European states (especially Germany, the UK, France), and the Dayton Agreement as a very complex and fragmented federation in the political sphere and a periphery capitalist country in the economic sphere. More importantly, the Western states’ intervention and the Dayton arrangements created an “international protectoral rule” in Bosnia-Herzegovina under the control and command of the USA, the Western European states and international organizations. This painful destruction and political-economic reconstruction process in Bosnia-Herzegovina is discussed and explained in the article.
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With Donald Trump’s election as President of the United States, the crisis of liberal democracy seemed to have reached its climax. The new American President has probably been the most emblematic face of the rise of populism in the Western world over the last few years. In a number of Western countries, the populist wave has brought to the forefront of the political scene politicians willing to build typical authoritarian regimes on the “ruins of democracy”. In other regions of the world, the present problems of the West have been a proof to many that democracy does not work. Among the victims of this new tendency are human rights and multilateral institutions. Within the Euroatlantic zone it is Russia which is seen as the winner in its game against the West. Moscow has efficiently modified the famous motto of British diplomacy “if you cannot beat them, join them” into “if you cannot beat them, elect for them a president who suits you”. This humiliation of the West by Putin (also in Syria) has helped, however, better to recognize the danger of Russian subversive cyberactivity and made it rather impossible for Russia to repeat the same strategy in the context of important elections of 2017 in the Netherlands, France, and Germany. Defeating nationalistic populism there would help the whole European Union to deal with both the impact of Brexit and with other challenges, including further reforms of the Union.
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Food is an essential part of our everyday lives and it is significantly important for international politics as for national identities. The future of food is widely discussed in political and social sciences in the contexts of food security, health, international marketing cultural identities, and migratory issues. Despite the growing importance of food studies, the enduring power of nationalism and the apparent relationship between food culture and national identity, writers on nationalism have made little reference to food in their research. This article aims to explore the connection between food and nationalism and I argue that food plays a central role in performing the nation's culture and expresses the idea of the nation through portraying spiritual, material and commercial aspects of the national identity. Here, the discussion will proceed through a well – known Middle Eastern food, Hummus.
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Langston Hughes lived in a racially segregated country within which racialism – fortified by religious indoctrination, ontology, and pseudo-scientific assumptions – attributed inferiority to blackness and superiority to whiteness. Under these circumstances, Hughes developed racial consciousness and was likely to observe, negotiate, and assess realities beyond the United States through this prism. The article focuses on Hughes’ comparative negotiation of two contrasting geopolitical contexts i.e. the racially segregated USA and the supposedly racially progressive USSR that he elaborates on in his travelogue I Wonder as I Wander. Special focus is given to examining the ways Hughes refers to and interprets his experience of the USSR, its political system, cultural expressions, social services, customs and ethnicities from a black American racial conscious frame of reference predicated upon African American experience and folk culture. The analogies he found between the situations of black Americans and the Soviet working class and various ethnicities, particularly the special affinity he felt with the peoples of Turkmenistan and his observation of Muscovite superior and elitist attitudes towards marginalized and disenfranchised residents of impoverished regions are highlighted. Interestingly, although Langston Hughes was treated as a guest of honor in Moscow, he nevertheless ventured forth to Soviet Central Asia, where, as he put it, “the majority of the colored citizens lived”. Lastly, the extent to which Hughes’ Soviet experience may have both heightened his universalist perspectives and racial consciousness is addressed with racial consciousness approached positively in that it enriched, individualized, and deepened Hughes’ understanding of a country so different from his own.
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Foreword to the special issue of Russian Studie Review devoted to trauma and posttrauma in Russian culture and literature.
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The purpose of the article is to analyze autobiographical story of Bulat Okudzhava Girl of my dreams (1985). The work is based on the writer’s mother’s memories who came back from the concentration camp in 1974. The main role in the story is the motive of the lack of acknowledgement, alienation of victimized (mother) and those who stayed free (son). The story of a woman, who was changed by the state to such extent that she was not recognized by her closest person, works as a mean to reveal and arraign the transformative power of the state. The lack of acknowledgement becomes a parable about the traumatic experience of terror, pervasive allegory of the subjective experience of repression.
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In this article that includes a broad bibliography, we present a modern educational approach, in an attempt to help students have a better understanding in the historical and ideological context in which the Romanian literature from the post-war period was written. So that we interpreted the message and the symbols we had found in the video of Depeche Mode - Where’s the Revolution. We mention the fact that we have issued opinions on the history of communism from a Christian perspective and not a political one. However we think that the interdisciplinary approaches of school themes provided in the curriculum for the national examinations may motivate students, raise the critical spirit in judging different aspects concerning the world of ideas and the visible reality, to determine the students to form an independent way of finding the needed information and also to come out of the rigor of mediocrity that media frequently promotes nowadays.
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The period of the Polish People’s Republic is known as the time when the law was an instrument in the hands of the authorities, and human and citizens’ rights were only illusory. The specificity of the law during this period resulted from its being interpreted through the Marxist-Leninist ideology commonly accepted by the political decision-makers. Although the Constitution of 1952 seemed to guarantee the freedom of conscience and religion to citizens and the freedom of fulfilling religious functions to religious communities, the interpretation of the Constitution led to completely different conclusions. However, in some parts the legislation of 1944-1989 was suitable for the incorporation into the new realities of the free Poland after 1989. This incorporation often required making adjustments and adapting it to the Third Republic of Poland ruled by law; sometimes it also required rejecting an unfair law that did not guarantee the freedom of conscience and religion ensured in the Constitution of 1997. One can also point out some provisions that were a dead letter of the law during the time of the Polish People’s Republic and were only realized in the free Poland. But the fact that not all the legal solutions from 1944-1989 were rejected is an expression of the will to maintain the continuity of the law and to single out those legal acts that after the political transformation could remain in force as acts that meet the standards of the state of law.
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