Politics: Moldova’s Elections as Tug-of-War
Russia and the EU are working to help voters make up their minds as they head to the polls this weekend.
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Russia and the EU are working to help voters make up their minds as they head to the polls this weekend.
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Certainties and uncertainties are not always in a happy balance. Not even then, when it's just a reflection. Uncertainties worry, certainties often kill. War and world warriors are somewhere between them. It is certain there is war, it is uncertain that he will ever disappear. For us, the Romanians, the most dangerous of all the wars that separated us and completed us is and will always be the Romanian-Romanian War ...
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An overview of books and academic journals allows one to come to the conclusion that scholars have taken note of and analysed the role of religion in international social relations more or less since the end of the Cold War, that is since the 1990s, particularly after the Al-Qaeda attacks of 11 September 2001. Events of key significance to the world order in recent decades have also become a pretext for giving more attention to religion. This is not a coincidence. International relations as a discipline is still searching for its place in science. Driven by the ambition of constructing global visions and theories, it must first of all transcend its original Eurocentrism and hence encounter religion and religiousness, among other things. The author of the article sees a need for an interdisciplinary approach to the study of the international reality as well as going beyond positivist research methods. She outlines the origins and development of international religious demographics and addresses the problem of including religion in international relations literature. She claims that although much is already being written on the subject, we are still at the beginning of the road. The challenge is worth taking up; on the one hand, it forces scholars to look beyond the boundaries of their discipline, and may significantly impact its identity on the other.
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The passing century of Poland’s independence reflects its strong correlation with a diversity of international factors. This correlation is incomparably stronger than in most European countries. Taking advantage of favourable international situation Poland manged to regain its independence (with a proportionally small contribution of its own), whereas its one time collapse, despite Poland’s strong resistance, proved effectively instrumental in its loss. In the second phase of that century, i.e. period of Cold War, Poland was officially an independent state in terms of formal constraints of international law, although its sovereignty was strongly curtailed, while initially – close to none whatsoever. At the same time, however, unlike in the interwar period, i.e. the times of the Second Republic, post-war Poland, i.e. People’s Republic of Poland, a country fenced off by the Iron Curtain, was guaranteed its international security by the Soviet Union, the hegemon of the communist system, in which Poland was, to all intents and purposes, a hostage to international peace. It was commonly acknowledged at the time that eventual all-out war might bring an unimaginable destruction to the country. Poland gained threat-free independence and true sovereignty only after the fall of the Communist Bloc, and subsequent division of Europe. This took place during the birth and short-term expansion of the liberal international order, in the concluding, third phase of that century. Poland became a part of the West in terms of its political, geopolitical, and institutional structure. Within the period spanning 1990 – 2015, the country boasted an impressive boom in all areas of life, although, as seems inevitable in the phase of post-transformation growth, the country’s booming development was spread out rather unevenly. Overall, however, it was by far one of the best quarters of a century in Poland’s history since 966 (in line with the criteria of peaceful relations with the neighbours, social cohesion, economic, and civilisational growth, e.g. life expectancy, acquired education level, etc.). The experience of this century offers some clear-cut pointers to be embraced by Polish political class with regard to pursuing the country’s foreign policy.
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The paper deals with tracing the role and respective significance of two multilateral mechanisms of building the state security, i.e. collective defence (military alliances) and collective security systems, in Polish security policy within the period spanning the regaining of its independence and modern times. The Authors pursue their assessment in chronological order, discussing the significance of the concepts of collective security and collective defence in Polish security policy in the three respective development phases of Poland’s modern statehood since 1918, i.e. the interwar period (the so called Second Polish Republic), the times of PRL (People’s Republic of Poland) spanning 1944–1989, and finally, in modern times, after 1989. Each time they discuss attendant determinants of Polish security policywithin a specific period, indicate the role and significance attributed to collective defence and collective security in terms of enhancing Poland’s own security, sovereignty, and territorial integrity, as well as try to demonstrate how those concepts had actually underpinned the manner of implementing the country’s policy in practical terms, within the fold of such organisations as the League of Nations, UN, OSCE, Warsaw Pact, NATO, as well as in the course of other political endeavours of bilateral or multilateral scope. The Authors also set out to assess overall effectiveness of Polish security policy within the respective periods, as well as determine how the concepts of collective security and collective defence actually contributed to it, including the extent of coordination in specifically targeted political endeavours pursued by Polish government.
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The article was inspired by the 100th anniversary of Poland’s independence. It comprises a critical appraisal of Polish foreign policy in Central Europe in terms of crucial challenges encountered en route to ensuring the country’s independence, sovereignty, and overall security. Particular attention is paid to the concepts originated and co-sponsored by Polish government, with a view to developing robust regional cooperation. In the interwar period, these were the projects originally developed by Józef Piłsudski’s political faction, focused on setting up a federation and the Intermarium. The principal reason for their failure was attributed to the incidence of border problems. During the Cold War period and Poland’s membership in the Eastern Bloc, Poland as a state was effectively stripped of any chances to pursue an active and independent foreign policy, whereas Central Europe as a political commonwealth of nations remained merely a shell concept throughout. After 1989, Polish government was keenly interested in developing regional structures and enhancing regional cooperation. Central Europe re-emerged, and so did a number of regional organisations. The Visegrad Group (V4) countries proved of special importance to Poland. Cooperation, or an occasional lack of it, were to a large extent determined by the aspirations of respective countries to join NATO and integrate with the European Union. Following the change of government in 2015, the key assumptions and building blocks of Polish foreign policy were also reformulated. Regional cooperation in Central Europe, especially within the fold of V4 countries, has become one of the crucial objectives. Besides, the Three Seas Initiative was launched as a brand-new political project, alas drawing directly upon the original, interwar concept of Intermarium. These efforts were accompanied by the government’s slogans of the need to oppose German domination in Europe.
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Every celebration of Poland’s regained independence offers a perfect opportunity to recall the times of the Second Polish Republic, now resplendent in its attire of historical sentimentalism. Often enough, it is set as a model state, while the references to it abound in the context of present-day challenges. The article aims to address the following question: in which period, i.e. 1918–1939 or after 1989, did Poland achieve more substantial success in terms of key economic indicators? A comprehensive outline of methodological and historical factors, combined with a comparison of economic indicators of the Second and the Third Polish Republic is deemed a prudent starting point for addressing the above-referenced question. With a view to precluding any confounding factors directly resulting from a long historical gap between the two, Poland’s economic indicators were juxtaposed against those of other European countries within the respective periods of time.
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Constraints on resources, staff, facilities, and other features of the multidimensional problems of the cultivation, production, trafficking, and use of illicit drugs (or drug related activities) in Afghanistan require many organizations to work together. The advantages of this cooperation include effectively and efficiently combating this multidimensional phenomenon. Addressing this, this paper examines the patternized interactions among counternarcotics stakeholders in the collaborative process of combating drugs in Afghanistan based on a typology of network governance: shared governance network, lead organization-governed network, and network administrative organization. This study reveals that counternarcotics policies are implemented in vast networks including governmental, nongovernmental and international actors in the form of multilevel and multisectoral governance across seven types of counternarcotics activities, comprising influence in decision making, information and advice seeking, collaboration, resource sharing, funding provision, and goal congruence. This research also improves our understanding of network governance, in which counternarcotics stakeholders are actually collaborating within several distinct networks across different areas of counternarcotics activities in Afghanistan
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This article is an attempt to describe the great social changes of the young Ukrainian generation (“Young Ukraine”) in the second decade of the 21st century and to present Andriy Lyubka’s writing as an example of this social phenomenon. In the first part of the article I explain my understanding of the term “Young Ukraine.” In the second part I present a socio-literary analysis of Lyubka’s writing in view of the political developments in Ukraine (especially during the Euromaidan Revolution). The third part outlines the conclusions.
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The aim of the article is to present the major armed conflicts: wars in three Middle East countries: Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan. The selection criteria include not only geographic factors, but also the nature of the conflicts, i.e. they are all civil wars and have all become internationalized as a result of involvement of external powers, i.e. the military forces of several countries. In Syria, Iraq, and Afghanistan the enemy has been the Islamic State; in Syria and Iraq it was the main enemy. The three countries were the most impacted by terrorism.
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An account of political life in Germany in 2017 can be divided into two parts: before and after the national election to Bundestag in September. Before, Germany was seen as a strong and stable actor which should soon implement, together with France, deep reforms of the European Union. The German-French duo was expected to take the leading role in the EU again. However, the results of CDU, CSU and SPD in the election to Bundestag in September were poor, while small parties became winners. An attempt to build a Jamaica coalition of CDU, CSU, FDP and the Greens failed and CDU, CSU and SPD had to try to form a great coalition again. This political turmoil in late 2017 and early 2018 reduced the German ability to act on the global stage. Chancellor Merkel’s position is weakened and the perspective for her political plans uncertain.
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“Illness as metaphor” has become a widespread expression used in writings of history of ideas, since its first appearance in the essay of Susan Sontag. The present paper offers an analysis of its use in the 19th-century Hungarian culture. At first, it is distinguished the use of diseases and bodily conditions as a cause of the author’s ideas in interpretations, from the illness-metaphors of S. Sontag, and from the body-metaphors of the early modernity. In the second part it is detailed the bodily self-reflection of the 19th-century Hungarian authors in context of the ideas incarnated in their works, and the images of their contemporaries, described by them, using bodily symptoms as causes of the ideas of their reviewed books. In the focus of the analysis are the memoirs of Gusztáv Szontagh, a distinguished critic of the second quarter of 19th century, edited by the author of this article for publication. Szontagh has used the patterns of the bodily determination of the ideas describing a large scale of authors, creating a New World made of words, only, in literature, philosophy, and politics. This complex system of ideas has lost its connections with the theory, and had become an element of the political rhetoric in the second half of the 19th century, and in the first half of the 20th century. An outlook for this afterlife is the topic of the epilogue of the present article.
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The problem of creating a sustainable national identity has been one of the major conflict sources, which Iraq has suffered from its early days onwards. This study examines the rationalistic roots of Iraq’s identity problem, and how King Faisal’s era (1921–1933), which encompassed the British mandate period, both contributed to this problem and tried to evade it. The aim of this study is to gain a basic understanding of Iraq’s identity problem, which has been set in motion under King Faisal I, whose legacy is yet to be solved regarding the Iraqi peoples’ feeling of belonging. Starting off with the problematique of a national identity framework in Iraq’s case, this study elaborates on problems of defining the Iraqi identity, and sheds light on the major sources of which it is fed off; pan-Arab nationalism, tribalism, religion and language. The central argument of this study is that identity is a major indicator for power politics including other aspects of society.
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In the late 16th and early 17th century, an attempt was made to codify the land law of the crown. One of the amendment drafts was made by Jan Januszowski. However, his Statuta prawa i constitucie was rejected by the Sejm in 1601. The reasons for its failure included political circumstances. Januszowski’s attempts at removing some faults of the project were however futile, as the amended version of the Statuses drafted around 1610 was not even discussed by the Parliament.
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The safety of the patient during the providing the health services is the main defiance for health policy and for the proper functioning of the units of the health care. The conditions of the health care system determinate the quality of the health services, and consequently cause the safety of the patient incidents. As a result, the right of patient to the safety is violated, frequently in very serious way. In this acrticle there are described two main questions. First of all, some statistical data has been cited, which illustrate the scale of the medical incidents, related to the health services in Poland and the other countries. Then there are briefly described european and polish legal acts, which regulate the procedures, areas and methods of the activities for improving the safety of the patients.
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Poland as well as many European countries is facing demographic crisis. Aging society, changing model of the family and reduced birth rate are serious issues that demand a reaction. Above matters are beyond doubt. However, there is a doubt answering the question what do we do in order to prevent those trends and if we are effective. This paper analyses demographic threats Poland is facing, factors which have impact on birthrate, as well as pro-family and pro-social policy of state. In pursuit of alternatives, solutions from USA shall be presented. Differences in redistribution level, and relation to it will be a subject of analysis, as they should become the source of reflection and inspiration in order to find solutions for problems in Poland and Europe.
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In the paper I argue that the source of unrests which torment Europe is the crisis of agency. Referring to Alain Tourain and Joseph E. Stiglitz I try to show that one of the most important sources of crisis of agency are economic disparities and financial capitalism. I also argue that the remedy for the crisis of agency are actions that aim at bringing back the agency to as many actors as possible.
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The article aims to introduce the analysis of Israeli politics from the perspective of French historian, philosopher and sociologist Raymond Aron (1905–1983). Aron belonged to the secular Jewish assimilated community in France. That is why his analyses of Israel are both very deep and detailed. Aron described Israel as a crossroad of global international relations and ”planetary“ diplomacy. In his life research, he emphasized strictly the disinterested analytical approach, thus he described Israeli policy and the political environment of Middle East from this point of view. Although his thinking was based on realistic theory of international relations and etatism, his analysis of Israeli policy rather came from his personal beliefs. In result, Aron could afford to understand freely all problems of the participants of Israeli politics.
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This paper presents characteristic and evaluation of Police’s social prevention programs in Pomeranian district. The Police performs actions in security as well as social order focused on improving the safety level. These arise strictly from the Police Act. Each of those programs requires, form the Policemen fulfilling it a deep and detailed analysis of social issues. It involves not only the awareness of occurring paradoxes but also consideration, imagination as well as responsibility of all the program implementers. The research problem is focused on Police preventive actions in particular with the areas encompassed by social preventive programs. Examination of the evaluation processes required using research method of quantitative and qualitative nature, which was an author’s poll, evaluating the program sent by Police units from Pomeranian district as well as the analysis of documents of Pomeranian’s district Police units.
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