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This paper is an attempt to challenge some of the most persistent myths about the link between the institutional role of judges and their political convictions in constitutional adjudication. These myths form together a fable of separation, according to which judicial roles and political convictions should be kept rigorously apart. The ensuing analysis contradicts the fable of separation in important ways. Firstly, it demonstrates that political convictions do play a signifi cant role in adjudication. Secondly, it suggests that diminishing the infl uence of party-related political identities on judicial decision-making does not always have a positive impact on the institutionalization of a judicial body, but rather it may signal its institutional decline. Thirdly, the paper argues that the fable of separation is particularly inapplicable to constitutional courts, since these institutions have hybrid functions: on the one hand, they follow and apply rules (the standard judicial function), while on the other, they sometimes have to decide cases on their merits in the absence of defi native rules (a function of political bodies in constitutional democracy). Finally, the paper argues that the development of judicial policies is an unavoidable element of judicial work and constitutional review: often, the self-declared ambition of judges to refrain from judicial policy making is just a camoufl age for specifi c policies. This should not be read as an accusation of judicial hypocrisy: even bona fi de judges are forced to develop judicial policies, in the elaboration of which their moral and political convictions do play a role.
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The above research explores questions about the ways in which group identities are formed, and the functions that they serve. It simultaneously recognizes that it is not just the legal statutes, but also the every-day practices to which they are attached, that define identities of any community. It is this array of cultural and symbolic resources that I am interested in developing further in my article. I focus here on how and which generational (and class) distinctions are understood, negotiated and put to work by actors themselves. Through in-depth interviews with young Slovenian and Macedonian intellectuals from the last Yugoslav generation I explore the perception of Yugoslav identities and I argue for its understanding as a hybrid. I suggest that understanding it as a hybrid helps to unveil the complexities of social reality, its diverse and multiple dimensions, the overcoming of traditional/modern/postmodern models, and at the same time, it resists the boundaries and dichotomies (neither/nor).
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This paper attempts to challenge the gender universal discourse of the quality press as legitimized institution for producing representations in the period of post-socialist changes.
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President Tadic’s initiative for a parliamentary resolution on Srebrenica triggered off a debate that laid bare the proportions of Serbia’s frustration manifested in its denial to face up the recent past, the Bosnian war in particular. The existence of Republika Srpska /RS/ - actually the very fact that it exists for fifteen years now – strengthened the Serb mainstream elite’s belief about full attainment of warring goals being just a matter of time and more favorable international constellation.
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World War II was the founding myth both for socialist Yugoslavia, based on the narrative of the supra-national partisan struggle, and for post-socialist Croatia, due to President Franjo Tuđman’s idea that both partisans and Ustasha had fought for the Croatian cause, albeit in different ways. How did this strong role of politics of history impact professional historiography and vice versa, what influence did the latter have? Does it make sense at all to speak of a Croatian historiography in socialist Yugoslavia—were there fields free of influence from socialist hegemonic narrative? This chapter argues that this is true for the conservative historiography before the 1960s, but also for the two currents that developed in this period: There was a growing tension between distinguished medieval studies and historians like Mirjana Gross, who established contacts with international experts, oriented themselves on new Western methodology, and promoted approaches of the Annales School on the one hand, and nationalist historians whose engagement seemed limited to verbal exchange about contemporary history with their Serbian counterparts on the other hand. This last current, represented by the later Croatian president Franjo Tuđman, became dominant after Croatia’s independence in 1991.
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As in many other former communist countries, a “competitive martyrdom” struggle erupted in Romania soon after the collapse of the former regime. By “competitive martyrdom” I understand the implicit or explicit attempt to exonerate the Romanian political community embodied by the state, or segments of that community, from either guilt or responsibility for having participated in World War II as a Nazi ally and from having perpetrated genocidal crimes against the Jews and the Roma. Coined by several scholars in the context of de¬bates around the extent, the limit or the desirability of emulating the alleged postwar denazification in Western Europe, competitive mar¬tyrdom is a complex issue, influenced not only by the immediate communist past and its treatment of the Holocaust in official history, but also, and above all, by socio-psychological factors linked to collective memory and to the social frameworks of the memory of specific groups within society. Furthermore, it entails also an international aspect, for the de-communizing polities strive to demonstrate their appurtenance to the democratic “international regime” and its values, but are obviously at pain when urged to confront collaboration.
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Here the author discusses the rise of this polarization of contemporary Slovak historiography, which was institutionalized in the 1990s, and still remains in the academic debates, and also as one of the constitutive elements in the public representations of history. The efforts to enforce a certain canonical interpretation of the past are not just a matter of politics or professionals. Academics often give it legitimacy or even create it, and are a part of the institutional networks involved in the dissemination of knowledge and ideas. Shared representations of the past are not accidentally produced by social groups, but are a consequence of cultural meditation, primarily of textualization and visualization
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In the following chapter, the author wants to show that the fear Andrić talked about can from time to time lull us into blindly believing those stories that know nothing about “perhaps” or “anticipation.” Or to put it more precisely, in discussing the straightforwardness of post-socialist revisionist historiography, he shows how hope in the uncensored interpretation of the past that accompanied the “end of communism” gave way to the fear of yet another strand of one-sided politics of history
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This book is the result of a two-year journalistic investigation that traces the history of Corporate Commercial Bank from its origin to its bankruptcy (1994-2014). The investigation was conducted on the basis of dozens of meetings with direct participants or witnesses of the events, representatives of state structures, political parties, business, regulators. In the process, hundreds of official and informal documents have been analyzed. Access to information by Bulgarian and international organizations has been requested many times. The collected facts, data, documents, and exclusive testimonies included in this book contain for the first time conclusive evidence of political corruption in Bulgaria. The aim of the KTBfiles project is to show the genesis of the "CCB model" (Corporate Commercial Bank model) and the technology of its expansion to magnitude, which pressed all key state institutions to the wall. The book explores the circumstances that made this vicious model possible, as well as the mechanisms for its eradication. This makes the investigation much more comprehensive, multi-layered and important than the chronology of bank bankruptcy, whether it is the largest in Bulgarian history. This qualitative journalistic investigation answers not only to the question #WHO but also to the questions how, why and especially what follows if we stop asking and live permanently with civil indifference and cynicism.
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Testimony report in the LUKIĆ and LUKIĆ case (IT-98-32/1)
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In the postsocialist regimes the rehabilitation of the quislings is a part of the useful new past. The article deals with the Serbian conservative attempts to rehabilitate serbian quislings in WW 2. The paper presents some forms of actually anti-antifascism. The former prescribed communist antifascism is replaced by anticommunist anti-antifascism. It was supposed the connection between economic privatization and a strong shift to the right awareness of the past. Quislings should be rehabilitated not only for normalizing nationalism but also because of the suppression of the Left, which should deprive her important moralpolitical capital – antifascism.
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Nakon više od dvadeset godina, ime Aleksandre Zec još uvijek je demarkaciona linija u hrvatskom društvu. S jedne strane su oni koji lamentiraju nad pravosudnom farsom koja je poznate ubojice, bez obzira na njihova priznanja i materijalne dokaze, ostavila na slobodi. S druge pak oni kojima Aleksandra Zec služi isključivo za uspostavljanje razlike između ‘naših’ i ‘njihovih’ žrtava. U takvoj viktimološkoj dihotomiji ‘naše žrtve’ dobivaju mjesta posebnog pijeteta i “mramor ih se sjeća”, dok ‘njihove’ ostavljamo medijskim strvinama, stalno novom prežvakavanju onoga što nacionalno lobotomirana svijest nikako ne može provariti.
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Više od dve decenije u Srbiji su zanemarene i, u suštini, odbačene sve vrednosti antifašizma koje su proglašene za anacionalne komunističke podvale poturene zavedenom srpskom narodu, iako je sam pojam antifašizam, ispražnjen od sadžaja i neretko sasvim pervertovan, ipak zadržan, kao neupitni izvor legitimiteta. Ukratko, antifašizmom je proglašeno ono što antifašizam nije, uz odbacivanje svega ili gotovo svega što antifašizam jeste. Te vrednosti izvornog antifašizma su internacionalizam, tolerancija prema raznim oblicima različitosti (iako ni u samom antifašizmu nisu sve razlike koje se sada smatraju legitimnim takvima oduvek smatrane), emancipacija od esencijalizovanja tih različitosti, i naročito, marginalizovanje nacionalnih, verskih, rodnih, seksualnih, političkih i drugih različitosti kao politički bitnih karakteristika i faktora moralnog, ili ma kog drugog vrednovanja čoveka. Antifašizam je i sada, dakle, u tradiciji onoga što istorijski jeste, progresivna ideja i moralni stav, pre nego ideologija, i podrazumeva konstantno širenje baze slobode i tolerancije. Sasvim zakonomerno, kao što je diskriminacija ključna reč fašizma, tako je antidiskriminacija ključna reč antifašizma.
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It is difficult to overstate the scale of the electoral sweep of Prime Minister Zoran Zaev’s Social Democratic Union of Macedonia (SDSM) party in the October 15th municipal elections. Former Prime Minister Nikola Gruevski’s party, the Internal Macedonian Revolutionary Organization – Democratic Party for Macedonian National Unity (VMRO-DPMNE), lost power at the local level across the country. Zaev’s victory, and that of his SDSM, following the June assembly of the coalition which included all ethnic Albanian parties, will reinforce the Zaev government’s control – and political responsibility. What Does This Mean? – The Chance for a. Democratic Reset
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28.1. The difficult path to change of power 28.2. Tuđman and the HDZ 28.3. The opposition and the alternatives
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