Around the bloc: Czech ‘Bloc Against Islam’ Leader Charged With Hate Speech
Far-right group leader’s lawyer says he is accused of inciting hatred against Muslims via Facebook posts.
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Far-right group leader’s lawyer says he is accused of inciting hatred against Muslims via Facebook posts.
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Peninsula still largely without power as Russia works to link annexed territory to national energy grid.
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This article examines the pro-Kremlin youth movement Nashi (2005-2012) – the hitherto largest youth organization since the Soviet-era Komsomol – in order to elucidate the background of changes that have appeared in the Kremlin’s symbolic politics since 2012. Nashi’s disappearance from Russia’s political scene by the summer of 2012 can be seen as an elementary part of the crisis that the Kremlin faced with the largescale protests that shook Russia’s major cities in the winter of 2011/2012. However, Nashi’s negative image did not fi rst appear in Russia with Putin’s decreased popularity and the beginning of the large-scale protests; rather, such a negative image has been manifested throughout the existence of pro-Kremlin youth formations supporting Putin’s political leadership, before and after Nashi. Rather than demonstrating a wellplanned and calculated insistence on patriotism and moral conservatism, the history of the whole pro-Putin youth movement indicates that it has continuously struggled with its public image ever since its idol, President Putin, appeared in Russia’s political arena. By focusing on Nashi’s online writings as its major voice, the author exemplifies the basic and unsolved dilemma of governmental mobilization – the tension between didactics and stimulation – that is crystallized in the movement’s political communication. After that, in a short excursion on Nashi’s successor, the project Set’, the author’s aim is to pinpoint how the ‘exit’ from Nashi’s communicative dilemma, in line with the Kremlin’s symbolic politics since 2012, appears as a proliferation of Putin’s personality.
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For several months in 2013-2014, thousands of Ukrainians and Bulgarians participated in anti-government protests. However, the outcomes could not be more different. The Bulgarian government politically survived #DANSwithme, while Euromaidan precipitated President Yanukovych’s fl ight from Ukraine in late February 2014. Why did #DANSwithme gradually dissipate, while Euromaidan escalated into the worst episode of political violence since Ukraine’s independence? We know that medium levels of repression applied inconsistently during protests can lead to radicalization and violence. But we do not know whether the judiciary’s behaviour before and during the protests could affect the likelihood of an escalation towards violence. This article proposes a complementary explanation of protest radicalization, which posits that recent, unambiguous, and effective use of a pliable judiciary by political incumbents to punish and undermine the opposition raises the odds that both sides will engage in violence. Politicized selective justice raises the stakes of victory both for the government and for the protesters, and reduces the possibility of a compromise. In Bulgaria, where the judiciary, albeit politicized, has not been effectively used to undermine political opponents, protesters perceived the government’s attempts to engage in legal persecution as a hassle and the chances of imprisonment as remote. Neither should the Oresharski government have expected to be prosecuted in the event of losing offi ce. In Ukraine, by contrast, the judiciary had a clear recent track record of politicized selective justice both against protest participants and high-level politicians. Former PM Yuliya Tymoshenko and another Orange Revolution main actor and former minister of interior, Yuriy Lutsenko, served lengthy prison sentences. Consequently, both the leaders of the opposition and Yanukovych and his coterie probably expected that imprisonment would be inevitable if they did not come out as winners of the Euromaidan standoff.
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The paper briefly describes the idea of cohousing communities built and managed by their owners and residents. The Author introduces special features of cohousing, which distinguish it from other forms of housing, i.e. non-profit construction and management by owners-users, creation of the sense of a community and strong social ties. It has been emphasized that the concept of cohousing incorporates realization of sustainable and ecological houses as well as sustainable communities, and is part of contemporary economic and social trends of limiting consumption – degrowth. The paper includes an analysis of conditions facilitating more extensive realization of housing in this formula in Poland as well as barriers, especially legal and mental ones – lack of social capital required to create close and cooperating cohousing communities.
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Urban movements are a new phenomenon observed in Poland. A manifestation of civic democracy, a counterweight to the lack of involvement of people in politics and the separation of citizens from public affairs. The article describes the phenomenon of urban movements in the world: the origins, development and significance. They characterized the beginnings of urban movements in Poland and describes the participation in elections of candidates deriving from this trend. In addition, an attempt to assess whether representatives of urban movements have succeeded or failed in the local government electionsin 2014.
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The paper concerns young Egyptian poets who sympathized with the Arab Spring in 2011 and expressed their angry and protests against dictatorship in the country. Spontaneous and emo- tional poems reflected two main factors: glorification of the revolution in the Tahrir Square and strong condemnation of Hosni Mubarak’s regime and its apparatus. However, the impulsive literature of young generation also became a chronicle of current history of Egypt, its society and political and social expectations and demands.
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Villagers demand eviction of all Roma after a man was detained for the murder of a young girl.
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This article analyses Estonian youth’s perceptions of their own political participation and their practices of participation on social media. We analysed 60 interviews with Estonian informants in a MYPLACE study and relied on a conceptual broadening that acknowledges the political potential of everyday. We relay on theories of standby citizenship and spiral of silence to understand signing petitions, commenting, liking and sharing politically minded content online. Based on this we suggest that young people in Estonia are interested in political issues and public opinion and their social media use represents a diversification of how citizens take part in civic matters. However, youths do not necessarily believe in the efficacy of social media in enacting political change and their reasons for not participating can be seen as indicative of a desire for both impression management and being affected by the spiral of silence.
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The literature on political participation and activism has gained from introducing a new term: ‘sub- activism’, which is used to describe individual, mostly internet-mediated activism of everyday choices. Yet there is ongoing work dedicated to the question of how these everyday choices relate to other repertoires of activism. Why do people choose to participate in politics in one form rather than in another? This paper contributes to the field by analysing the rhetoric and repertoire of activists who are organised around two NGOs: the Estonian Pirate Party and the Estonian Internet Society. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, analyses of online materials, and 15 in-depth interviews, findings indicate that the choice of repertoire is strongly connected to the activists’ views on the internet, activism and politics. Most importantly, understanding what ‘politics’ stands for influences the choice of sub- activism as suitable or unsuitable action for these groups. These findings are then discussed in the context of East European ‘apolitical’ activism and civil society.
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Youth political participation via state-sponsored institutional settlements has always been considered a goal of youth policies, representing a means of creating politically active and caring citizens. Throughout Europe, however, the number of politically active young people seems to be diminishing, with youth frequently described as apathetic and disengaged. While a growing body of academic research has concentrated on exploring the reasons behind political inactivity, this article explores the motivation and activities of some of the young people who are involved in institutionalised youth organisations, asking if the meanings behind institutional political participation are undergoing a process of change together with the rest of the society. Based on qualitative in-depth interviews, participant observation and analysis of documents (including online communication) collected as part of the research project MYPLACE, we examine the meanings young people attach to their participation. We show that the character of these organisations and motivations behind participation are miscellaneous; sometimes strikingly similar to the forms of participation not traditionally associated with political activism but rather ascribed to disengaged youth.
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This special issue of Studies of Transition States and Societies closes with a concluding discussion that aims to contextualise some of the key findings from the preceding articles. To do so, we use comparative level evidence drawn from other regions included in the MYPLACE consortium, identifyng contrasts and commonalities in how youth politics is practiced across different European regions. The basic approach is one of assessing the extent to which patterns of participation in Estonia diverge from activism elsewhere, thus locating Estonian youth within a broader analytical framework.
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The aim of this article is to examine the current tendency of recruitment in the civil service of Georgia, in light of the wave of dismissals after the 2012 parliamentary elections, and to highlight common problems that are characteristic for competitions in state organizations. Based on data collected during research, this article claims that drawbacks of the current recruitment practices in the Georgian civil service demonstrate that this aspect of human resources management carries signs of “team or leader affiliation and loyalty” approach. This tendency, which relies less on the assessment of applicants’ competency and motivation, seriously hinders the development of the public administration system in Georgia.
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Milorad Dodik’s defiance of ban on ‘Statehood Day’ plebiscite seen as bid to highlight weakness of Bosnia’s central authorities, pave way for secession vote.
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Postalo je besmisleno naglašavati da je socijaldemokracija u krizi. Takvo stanje traje od osamdesetih godina i to je njena, kako se kaže, ‘normalnost’. Antun Vujić koji je zaštitni znak hrvatske socijaldemokracije u svojoj publicističkoj knjizi Hrvatska i ljevica kaže: »Prikrivanje ne pomaže. Socijaldemokracija kao politička organizacija je u krizi. Ono što nije u krizi je potreba za socijalnom demokracijom, usporediva i sa samom krizom« (2014: 342). Vujić se u knjizi posvetio rekonstrukciji ‘normalnosti’ koja razara današnju socijaldemokraciju, ali i društveno tkivo Hrvatske. Odbacio je ideološke i policy intervencije Giddensa, Blairea i Schrödera, tj. njihov Third Way, jer je to učenje samo formalno produljilo život socijaldemokraciji do početka globalne krize 2008.
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Researchers have always found young people interesting as an indicator of the state of a society. Attitudes, values, competences and behavior of young people are considered a sort of litmus paper that can adequately explained wider social tendencies of a given society. This paper analyzes political competencies and political participation of Zagreb youth. Political competencies and political participation are two characteristics of quality of functioning of consolidated democracies. It is therefore important to monitor and develop them in order to achieve a more effective political system. With a combination of qualitative and quantitative research techniques, the authors contextualize those two structural dimensions of the political life of young people. Hence, this paper explains political competences and political participation in reference to contemporary literature in this field. The results of a survey conducted on a sample of 411 young people in Zagreb, together with the results of &ve group interviews with high school and university students, demonstrate low level of understanding of roles and factors of youth policy. The authors argue that young people are discouraged to participate in community and political life because of such low understanding of politics.
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Ghana is regarded as a leader of democracy and stability in Sub‑Saharan Africa. Owing to two decades of rapid economic growth and relatively peaceful transitions of power after elections, it is also one of the fastest developing and safest countries in the region. However, some challenges for internal stability and development are still to be addressed, for instance: the quality of leadership, poverty, environmental problems or inadequate and ineffective regulations. While solving these problems Ghanaian politicians and citizens have to either choose between or bring together both tradition and modernity. One of the aspects to analyse is traditional form of governance, in particular the role of traditional leaders, such as chiefs and queen mothers, in development, as well as their relationships and coexistence with the local and state government institutions. Therefore, this article focuses on understanding how traditional ways of thinking and acting, especially in the case of traditional leaders, influence Ghana’s strive for national development. The main questions are: whether they can be used as resources or rather constitute impediments? and how are they changing to address contemporary challenges?
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