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The issues of government debt and deficits became a current component of the public finances of virtually all the countries in the world since the Great Depression in the 1930’s. The EU countries do not diverge from this picture and most of them display complex financial problems, in which consistent budgetary deficits have combined with negative net exports, with the ageing and pension system challenges and recently with the global financial crisis. In our paper we analyze the evolution of the public deficits run by the old and new EU member states, trying to identify their main causes and to propose several courses of action in order to control the deficits. We started with a structural analysis of the income side of the budget, especially for direct and indirect taxes, followed by a quantitative analysis of the growing deficits in the EU countries. We identified some widespread causes of the public deficits, such as the growing share of the public social expenditures and of the public wages, or the increase in public investments. Finally we presented some solutions for fiscal consolidation, which we think is essential in order to ensure the survival of the Euro and of the European Union.
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Поповићи, свештеничка породица из Субјела, села пет кило- метара источно од Косјерића, једна је од најстаријих у Ужичкој Црној Гори. Прворазредних извора о њеном боравку на том простору има већ од шездесетих година XVIII века. Из ове породице потекло је шест генерација свештеника, који су од 1768. до 1971. опслуживали парохије цркава у Сечој Реци, Субјелу и Косјерићу. Поред тога, из ње је потекао и један од истакнутих устаничких војвода у Првом српском устанку, Алекса Поповић, као и неколико других личности, које су као игумани манастира Никоља кабларског, председници сеоских општина, резервни официри или учитељи оставиле трага у завичајној, али и националној историји.
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In the present article I outline the situation of children who belong to an indigenous community of Ba’Aka Pygmies, a group inhabiting the Sangha-Mbaéré region of rainforest in the Central African Republic. These children are inscribed in the categories of “invisible” and “unheard” children. They are also deprived of the right to be properly researched. This is due to a number of external and internal factors which shape the contemporary reality of the formerly colonised country. Despite the fact that the Central African Republic broke free from colonial oppression, since 1960s it has been experiencing internal colonisation and civilising missions by the countries of the Global North so as to be “fruitfully” written in the narrative of national development. Thus, referring to key categories, I discuss postcolonial representations: images and narratives perceived through the perspective of a female researcher who, since 2002, has conducted field research among excluded and marginalised children and young people in fragile (vulnerable) contexts in Central Africa.
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The article presents the use of childhood figures in the process of constructing a militaristic discourse in Russian society. The author also tries to identify ways to use similar figures of childhood in different historical and political contexts. Comparative analysis was related to the figures taken from the reality of the Soviet Union and modern Russia. The method of analysis was based on a narrative analysis. Analysing propaganda broadcasts at the syntactic and paradigmatic level, the paper shows that propaganda texts created in different times use similar measures plots distant in time use similar measures. The use of figures of childhood appears to be the one of the most effective tools of military propaganda in Russia.
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The aim of the article is to analyse the European Union as an actor in the international arena from the point of view of the three most influential concepts, i.e. Europe as a civilian, normative and military power. Characterization is made taking into account the evolution of the Union's external activities ranging from failed attempts to initiate political integration in the 1950s until the period after the entry into force of the Treaty of Lisbon in 2009. The European Union is treated as a new kind of power, whose value is derived from the use of economic and diplomatic instruments (a civilian power), attachment to the values and norms of international law (a normative power) and the limited use of military instruments in the form of Petersberg operations (a military power). The EU cannot fully play a significant role in the international arena. Restrictions in this regard derive from the lack of an adequate response by the EU to many current challenges internal (e.g. Brexit) or external challenges (e.g. the war in Syria and the influx of refugees to Europe). They are also the result of the fact that the European Union is treated as a hybrid structure, since it is derived from different sources, or consists of elements with different or opposite nature.
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The phenomenon of corruption in consolidated democracies has been ignored for a long time by academics. Nevertheless in the last decade of the XX century new factors have emerged leading to the institutionalization of an issue of corruption in the advanced democracies. This change can be observed also in the case of Finland, which is perceived as one of the least corrupt country in the world according to the Corruption Perception Index published by the Transparency International. However, also in Finland a specific forms of corruption can be found. The article aims at description of the ‘old brothers networks‘ as a corrupt practices peculiar to Finland. The author seeks to present an institutionalization of the ‘old brothers network’ issue and the problems related to an occurrence of this phenomenon in Finnish public sphere. Primarily, it is argued that Finland has witnessed a redefinition of informal, consensus-based practices, which commonly had been accepted as a part of the political system, into the practices defined as corrupt. The subtle nature of these practices is a reason behind difficulties with classifying them as a clear-cut forms of abuse of power for private gain.
More...Kronika zbrodni; Oczekiwanie; Przeżycie; Ocalenie; Wykonanie; Obserwacja; Zatarcie
Podwileńskie Ponary stają się miejscem systemowej eksterminacji mieszkańców Wileńszczyzny - Żydów, ale i Polaków. Ich śmierć z litewskich rąk na zawsze zmienia społeczny obraz tego regionu.
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For the Republic of Chechoslovakia, a state without access to the sea, a natural way to get to the Baltic Sea was the Oder and Szczecin (Stettin). Between the two World Wars in the 20th century the country on the Wlatava (German: Moldau), in spite of receiving its own duty-free zone in the Szczecin port and in spite of its own river barges according to the treaty of Versailles, did not take the full advantage of the Oder route. A series of events caused that Prague directed its trade and transit expansion towards the ports of the North Sea, especially Hamburg, and the Mediterranean Sea. The second world war brought about some political and economic changes in the situation of Poland and Checkoslovakia. As a result of the territorial changes a part of the German territories, including most of the course of the Oder, became Polish. Any potential border conflict between the two countries was prevented by signing the treaty of friendship and mutual assistance on March 10th, 1947, and on July 4th of the same year – a convention of economic cooperation. An important part of the latter was the chapter concerning the transit arrangements, thanks to which Czechoslovakia was conceded a duty-free zone in the Szczecin port and a privileged position in the navigation on the Oder; the convention entitled the Czechoslovakian merchant shipping to use the Polish seaports on the same conditions the Polish ships had. A consequence of the transit arrangements was an agreement between Czechoslovakia and Poland concerning the lease of a part of the Szczecin port concluded on July 15th, 1949. By virtue of that agreement Czechoslovakia received a wharf 300 metres long and 100 metres wide for its own use. May 12th, 1948 saw the creation of the Czechoslovakian Oder Navigation (Company) to run the navigation on the Oder River by the Czechoslovakian barges; its headquarters were in Wrocław with a branch in Szczecin. On the other hand, at the end of the 1940s the Czechoslovakian freight forwarding passing through the Polish ports was monopolised by the PLC ‘Spedrapid’ in Gdynia (with branches in Gdańsk and Szczecin); its capital and management were partly Polish and partly Czechoslovakian. After a few years of using its own wharf in the Szczecin port and operating the shipping company on the Oder (both of which turned out to be extremely unprofitable) Czechoslovakia gave them up. A new agreement between Poland and Czechoslovakia was concluded on January 13th, 1956; it put an end to the foreign area in the port of Szczecin and to the shipping company on the Oder. Surprisingly, the liquidation of the two agencies did not result in a decrease of transit turnover but just the reverse: caused its increase. In the subsequent decades Szczecin played an important role in the Czechoslovakian foreign trade. In 1958 Szczecin became the biggest transit port for our southern neighbour overtaking Hamburg. The Szczecin shipowner – the Polish Steamship Company – was one of the leading carriers in the Czechoslovakian exports and imports. Czechoslovakia purchased products of the Polish shipyards, whence a part of its ships came. A significant part of the officers of the Czechoslovakian Shipping Company (Československá námořní plavba) had been prepared by the Maritime Academy in Szczecin. Yet, the attempts to cooperate more closely undertaken in the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s failed.
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Since the beginning of the 19th century the evolution of economic relations and complicated political factors on the Polish territories forced – and at the same time – enabled part of the female landowners to engage in business activities. Actually, even in ancient times female landowners happened to run country estates (the so called female farmsteads), but at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries, together with industrial and civilisational changes, the role of women in running country farms acquired a new quality. Female landowners became official administrators of country estates responsible for their financial situation. The author deals with questions concerning the participation and contribution of female landowners both in the development of their own estates and the economic life of the Kingdom of Poland as a whole at the turn of the centuries. The questions asked in the text of the article, among other things, about the agricultural branches – not only the traditional ones but the less typical ones as well – preferred by female landowners permit noticing the rise in aspirations of women who started expressing their opinions in the press and professional journals on economic matters; on the other hand, their struggle with the market was not always successful. Female landowners – representatives of the Polish elites – looked for inspiration in the European models. The knowledge and skills they acquired they implemented into their own economic activities, and at the same time they shared their experience with others in social forums. Female landowners more and more frequently appeared arm in arm with men as their economic partners who had equal rights and who undertook attempts – based on their financial independence – of self-reliant economic activities that sometimes failed and sometimes succeeded. Their financial independence resulted from slow changes in the mentality typical of the social group they came from.
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The discourse on the social engineering as an instrument of shaping modern societies gained strength at the end of the 19th century. In further deliberations the attention is paid to the question of how the connection between politics and science – restricted to the relation between geopolitics, bio-politics and ethnic cleansing – functioned after WW1 and WW2, and particularly how it affected the international order.
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Fotoreportaż. Wiejski fotograf na Ponidziu zapisuje w kadrach bliski mu świat. Uratowana spuścizna Mieczysława Pragnącego.
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