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The relation between the east and the west continues to be a main cultural, political and social topic. When we refer at this antinomy we think about a spatial opposition, a metaphor and a cultural and a civilizational cleavage. This spatial opposition which we can find in literature, arts, religions, ideologies, politics or mentalities, turns in metaphors and brutal realities
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India and the European Union (EU) have long been touted as natural partners, yet despite their apparent commonalities, political relations between the two global powers have lost momentum. The impasse reached in negotiations towards an EU– India Free-Trade Agreement (BTIA), and niggling bilateral disputes are indicative of the current state of affairs. Therefore the EU is for India a relatively insignificant partner, which is reflected in the way the EU is presented in the Indian media. Although occasionally portrayed in a negative way, the EU is on the whole treated with indifference by the Indian online news media, receiving minimal coverage. France, Germany and the United Kingdom (UK) are far more visible in the Indian media, unsurprisingly as close bilateral ties with these three EU Member States is central to the Government of India’s strategy in Europe. A shortage of understanding about the EU and a lack of profile gained by EU leadership in India are identified as main causes for the current indifference felt towards the EU in India. High level engagement is identified as being the most effective way to increase the EU’s profile and perception in India, with the EU–India summit expected in the first half of 2016, offering leaders a perfect platform.
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The article focuses on the analysis of Singapore’s political adaptation. The author attempts to answer the following question: What kind of strategy of political adaptation has been adopted by Singapore as regards its activity in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN)? The paper verifies the hypothesis that Singapore’s political adaptation is characterised by creativity, which means that Singapore strives to adjust to the changes taking place in the regional environment and tries to influence its shape. The article is divided into several parts. In the first one, the author discusses the concept of political adaptation, the second one focuses on the vision and principles of Singapore’s foreign policy, and the subsequent ones describe the country’s activity in ASEAN.
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The subject of the analysis was the reception of liberalism in selected Polish Catho-lic newspapers – chosen in the context of frequently discussed differences between Polish Catholic communities. After 1989, liberalism was treated as a threat in certain Catholic communities. However, it may be assumed that the criticism concerned the liberalism understood in its stereotypical form. Liberalism was frequently and deeply criticised in “Niedziela” and “Gość Niedzielny.” It was associated with all the imperfec-tion and evil of the contemporary world. The Catholic community related to, among others, “Tygodnik Powszechny” attempted to conduct a dialogue with representative liberal thinkers, frequently emphasising the positive aspects of the most significant liber-al principles. The analysis of contemporary Polish Catholic press confirms the fact that the disputes depicted in the previous decade are still valid. Moreover, it might even be concluded that the rhetoric has sharpened and the boundaries demarcating the Catholic communities in their attitudes to liberalism have become more pronounced.
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The goal of this article is to an answer to a fundamental dilemma that appears in the organisation and functioning of democratic countries. It arises from the necessity to provide national security while simultaneously ensuring a specific catalogue of values, including citizen laws and freedoms. The author attempts a teleological analysis of the conception of national security in the conditions of a constitutional democracy. After defining the general characteristics of the security conception, the author investigates them in terms of relations between the security of national structures and personal and group interests of the citizens. The author points out their axiological and legal aspects formalised in the fundamental law and underlines the synergic interdependence between the security of national organisational structures and the security of the society – the nation.
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The century that has passed since the European outbreak of the first world-wide conflictalso witnessed the most radical changes in the nature of power, its manifestations and itseffects. Power was aligned in accordance with the political and legal order developed bythe United States, as manifested in the Charter of the United Nations. Power evolved alsoin terms of form together with the emergence of a new European model and as a resultof the ‘digital revolution’, which enabled groups or even individuals to challenge the statein areas which had previously seemed restricted to the government. However, the fundamentalforces that drive power still shape the world order.
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The article examines changes in the interpretation of the concept of national security under the influence of globalization. The author reveals the impact of formation and development of the contemporary world order on the security policy of separately taken countries. Based on analysis of the Russia’s and Poland’s basic documents in the field of national security he compares the priorities of each country in this sphere during the end of XX – beginning of XXI century. The conclusion demonstrates not only common positions, but also differences in the two countries’ approaches to the problems of their own national security.
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The purpose of the article is the presentation of the most important facts concerning the situation in Vietnam in 1940–1945 with particular focus on the independence efforts of the population of that country ended in a partial success in the form of proclamation of the Democratic Republic of Vietnam in September 1945. The text includes, among others, the geopolitical importance of the French Indochina in the context of the War on the Pacific, the policies of the colonial administration, Japan’ s activities aimed at taking the control over Vietnam, the activity of the local communist movement and the role of the United States in setting in motion the process of decolonisation of the Indochinese Peninsula.
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The Conference of Ministers of Education of the Federal Republic of Germany in 1950 issued a directive stating that each subject of school education, in line with its specificity, was to contribute to political education of youth. Historical education of youth was required to shape their historical thinking oriented to understanding of the present. The ensuing directives of the educational authorities emphasized decidedly tasks of historical education treated as an “experimental laboratory” for political educa-tion, including a critical light thrown on National Socialism and all kinds of totalitarianism, anti-Seimitism, all kinds of discrimination and breaking human rights. Not only in the Federal Republic but also in the German Democratic Republic, both in politics and in education in the 1950s and 1960s, a special weight was attached to the so called German problem, meaning the unification of Germany which was pre-sented as a global problem... Historical-political education of the West German youth in the 1950s provided objective knowledge of the German problem and of the neighbours from the other side of the Elbe. It distanced young Germans from the Bonn Republic from their country-fellowmen on the other side of the Elbe. In the German Democratic model of historical-political education, the German problem was perceived in an ideo-logical dimension, especially in respect to teaching the youth the spirit of Democratic Socialism and hostility to the Federal Republic as an “imperialistic state”. The changing of the governing elites in both of the German states at the turn of the 1950s and 1960s started a new chapter in the bilateral relations, marking progress from confrontation to co-existence. The model of historical-political education did not corre-spond with the transformation, therefore the contents of the model of education were adapted to the political changes. The breakthroughs in the history of Europe and Germany over the centuries, such as “the Autumn of the Peoples”, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the collapse of the system of the real socialism reached the educational authorities’ and institutions involved in the European integration from the point of view of historical-political education with a delay not only in the united Germany but also in other countries of Western Europe. Only in November 1991 did the Conference of the Ministers of Education issue a di-rective entitled “On the European dimension in education”. Something resembling a “discovery of the history” of Central and Eastern Europe and the reciprocated interest in the history of Western Europe in the systems of education of the countries in the European Union is a beginning of the process of European integra-tion in respect to historical-political education on the scale of the whole continent.
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Along with the rapid development of Chinese economy people are more interested in what will be the Chinese contribution to the reconstruction of the world culture. This article presents Neo-Confucian intellectual project and contemporary problems of Neo-Confucian political philosophy. Confucianism is a very important part of Chinese culture. For the most of Chinese history Confucianism has been associated with an immutable hierarchy of authority and unquestioned obedience. At the time of Hundred Days Reform of 1898 and during the May Four Period Confucianism was criticised. During this period the beginning of Chinese liberalism can be noticed. Chinese liberal thought was identified with anti-Confucianism, science, democracy, liberty, progress and the vernacular movement. The New Culture intellectuals of the early twentieth century blamed Confucianism for Chinese weaknesses. In the People’s Republic of China Confucianism was replaced by Maoism as a new official state ideology. Nowadays, we can see again a return to the Confucian philosophy. The revival of Confucianism in China and other Chinese-speaking countries appears in the form of Neo-Confucianism. In contemporary China we can see a discussion about Neo-Confucian relevance and its possible advantages over political liberalism – the dominant philosophy in the West today. The question is whether Neo-Confucianism can offer “the third-way” or “the Chinese way” of development in the global era.
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Assoc. Prof. Rossen Stoyanov, PhD in his study "Political Myths - New Religion, a New Communication?" emphasizes that political myth establishes the eternity of the past, the inevitability of the present and the inescapable fate of the future. Myth is the armor of ideology. Political myth often claim the level of belief in the absolute truth of the sacred.
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The present study explores the ways of utilizing literature in political dispute, as defined by Bakhtin’s concept of speech genres exploited in secondary genres. The material includes Turgenev’s and Dostoyevsky’s novels and Yevgeny Chirikov’s family chronicle. The writers in question present politics in the anthropological sense of the term: as man’s relation to his social reality. The author attempts to determine which literary works were viewed as politically motivated and what functions they fulfilled in political disputes. The analysis reveals the following: literary works often served as a pretext to start a dispute, and in the dispute itself – as a means of defining the protagonists’ cultural and generational identity and values, as a rhetorical trick, as a source of social concepts and behaviours, as a catalyst for a revolutionary paradigm and, finally, as a means of discriminating against political opponents. On these grounds, the author is inclined to argue that Russian literature of the 19th century constituted a strong social communication component and provided ideological material for political discourse.
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The origin, institutionalisation and evolution of international development co-operation are related to the history of the United Nations. The UN Charter contains numerous provisions concerning social and economic rights. Within the 70 years of UN’s existence, they were subject to various interpretations, allowing the organisation to adjust to the needs of states and of the international environment. The approach to development was noticeably changing, as reflected in the subsequent four Decades, starting with development perceived in economic terms, through social and economic development, followed by liberal orthodoxy, which was then replaced by the concept of sustainable development expressed in the Millennium Development Goals and then the 2030 Sustainable Development Goals. At the same time, the right to development was taking shape; it was formulated and adopted in 1986 by the UN General Assembly and subsequently confirmed and commonly accepted in the concluding documents of the World Conference on Human Rights held in Vienna in 1993 as ‘universal and inalienable right and an integral part of fundamental human rights’. This event started the process of institutionalisation of this right, in particular the development of instruments used to implement it. The development and consolidation of the right to development influenced the adoption and form of the Millennium Goals. On the other hand, the implementation of the last of the millennium and post-millennium goals concerning international cooperation and the obligation of development assistance is considered the prerequisite for the realisation of all the millennium goals.
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Unconditionality is the main feature of the idea of basic income. What we have seen in the last few decades is the development of conditional cash transfers in developed, and especially, in developing countries. The tension between expansive conditionality and proposals of unconditional basic income is the main interest of this article. Firstly, the author develops an understanding of conditionality by way of distinguishing three types of it with the consideration of the definition, role and effectiveness of social sanctions. The context for presentation of these topics is the classical construct of a social security system with the main social insurance pillar being dependent on labour market participation and supplemental social assistance, one for those without social insurance entitlements, and the poor. Against this background the author assesses some weaknesses of the case for the basic income supported by Guy Standing and some possibilities of making them less persuasive.
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Jan Sowa in his book "Inna Rzeczpospolita jest możliwa" proposed an alternative model of state organization, based on the concepsts of multitude and commons. This article is both a polemic and extension of Sowa's proposal, in the area of social studies of science. Basing on the state of research, including author's ethnographic practice, article highlights issues connected with metrology, cost distribution, motivations of the creators of the commons (basing on the review of research on open source). In the second part of the article the case of Open Source Drug Discovery program is discussed, focusing on the possibility of commons (public health). The case shows how issues presented in the first part could be alternatively resolved, saving part of the Sowa's proposal and avoiding its major drawbacks.
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The gap between Marx’s theoretical writings on political economy (for example, the three volumes of Capital) and his historical writings (such as The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte and The Civil War in France) arises out of certain limitations that Marx placed upon his political-economic enquiries. These limitations are outlined in the Grundrisse where Marx distinguishes between the universality of the metabolic relation to nature, the generality of the laws of motion of capital, the particularities of distribution and exchange, and the singularities of consumption. What an analysis of the content of Capital shows is that Marx largely confined his efforts to identifying the law-like character of production to the exclusion of all else. While this allowed him to identify certain laws of motion of capital within any form of the capitalist mode of production, it did not and could not constitute a total theory of a capitalist mode of production. A better understanding of what it is that Marx can do for us through his identification of the general laws of motion leads to a far better appreciation of what it is that we have to do for ourselves in order to make Marx’s theoretical findings applicable to particular conjunctural conditions, such as those that have arisen throughout the economic crisis that began in 2007.
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On the 28th of June, 1914, a consumptive student, Gavrilo Princip, shot and killed prince Franz Ferdinand, the heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Monarchy. The prince’s wife Sofia was also killed by a stray bullet. In the century that has passed since the assassination, the memory of Princip and the cult constructed around him has been distorted beyond recognition. As local and international politics were altered, so changed Princip’s image. The memory of Princip now evokes strong reactions not only in the South Slav lands, but in Hungary as well. In what follows, we will examine possible sources for the strong reactions evoked by Princip’s memory among Hungarians a century after his act.
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The article discusses the question why the German-speakers in Northern Italy’s South Tyrol province are only very rarely referred to as an Austrian minority, in spite of the fact that they were split off from Austria, and not Germany, in the aftermath of World War I. An analysis of the naming of German-speaking South Tyroleans in German, Austrian, Italian and English-speaking news media, which demonstrates a preference for terms such as “German-speaking minority” or “German minority” over “Austrian minority and equivalents, is followed by a discussion of three hypotheses to account for the situation. The author shows how the question of how to name the German-speaking South Tyroleans is closely intertwined with the issue of Austrian national identity and its re-orientation away from Germany in the aftermath of the Second World War. The author comes to the conclusion that the minority is not usually referred to as Austrian both due to the fact that it is difficult to include them in the young (civic) Austrian nation in a logically consistent manner, and due to the German-speaking South Tyroleans’ own inconsistent self-identification as Austrians.
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