Around the Bloc: Romania Mulls ‘Legal Bribes’ to Stem Doctors’ Exodus
Only a few hundred of the doctors now working at the country’s public hospitals are aged 30 or younger.
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Only a few hundred of the doctors now working at the country’s public hospitals are aged 30 or younger.
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Reinvented after ’89, feminism in Romania is in good shape. There is a solid academic feminism, with relevant gender sensitive researches and generations of MA and PhD students committed to women and gender issues. More than twenty years of activism produced concrete results-new organizations and legislation, good practices of gender sensitive projects, various partnerships with governmental and nongovernmental bodies in terms of supporting gender issues. At this moment, a revived, energetic, vocal type of feminism is to be observed. A young generation of feminists (majority with a solid academic background), at ease with the new communication technologies, is more vocal and active than ever in the public arena, especially in social media. However, change is still slow, main issues from the public agenda of the feminist movement are more or less the same as twenty years ago and society’s general attitude towards feminism and women’s movement remains negative or, at the best, reserved. The audience of the new strong, radical, committed feminist messages is often reluctant both to the content and the forms of expression. Why feminism is not yet a public authority able to really change the political agenda? Looking for some possible answers, the article will focus on two critical issues: (i) the magnifier effect of the online activism; (ii) the perverse effects of addressing sexism to neo-sexists.
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The paper (1) interprets original meaning of the occupied and banished concept of social revolution, and (2) explains its contemporary shifts in content and scope. It analyses both political and internal scientific corrections and social conditions of re-evaluation of the revolution concept. The paper belongs to the conceptual history (Begriffsgeschichte) which, as a reflexive aspect of history, reviews the concepts that interpret history. The conceptual history is the history of ideas and issues that is clustered in conceptions of its own age. Hegemonic concepts are indicators of social and political change, and they are not only theoretical categories, but they are active fighting unities in practice, the factors of processes and history. They are not only analytical, but political weapons as well.
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The article deals with the possibility of strengthening Polish security by establishing strategic system resilience the country’s aggression. Discusses the enterprise such as irregular activities in the territory occupied by enemy; support operational troops by territorial defence; preparation of mobilizing reserves; the operational preparation of the country’s territory and protection of the critical infrastructure objects; security of citizens and the State structures, including the common civil protection; universal education for security, including the preparation of the defence of society. The article emphasises the role of the participation of non-governmental organisations and private entities in the provision of strategic resistance country, pointing to the legal, financial, organisational and historical circumstances.
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The article presents the main features of marketing orientation of NGOs, indicating differences in comparison to commercial enterprises and public institutions. It also identified key developmental factors that determine the need for adaptation of marketing by NGOs and have an impact on the specific features of their conduct in the market.
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In the last few decades, the importance of civil society has been resurrected, both as a theoretical concept linked to democracy as well as a social practice. Even though civil society implies different definitions in the course of history, in contemporary sociopolitical systems of the West, it is defined as a part of the institutional framework of the democratic constitutional state. This type of institutionalized civil society started to develop in Croatia with the abrupt structural changes that occurred in the last two and a half decades in southeast Europe after the fall of socialism - a process in which feminist civil society organizations (CSOs) played an important role. They were the main actors to introduce favorable social changes for gender equality. However, a contemporary assessment of gender equality shows that institutional change and the implementation of mechanisms for gender mainstreaming have proven to be insufficient. In addition to the lack of implementation of the policies and legal framework, the traditionalization trend in Croatia has intensified in the last few years. These negative trends can be tied to broader neoliberal tendencies that have swept across the West in the last few decades: the retreat of the welfare state and cuts in the public sector, the crises of representative democracy, economic crisis and commodification of all social domains. In this context, feminist CSOs seem to be between a rock - the regressive local context, and a hard place - the neoliberal hegemony on a global scale.
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This article was primarily concerned with offering an exposition of the basic tenets of two important thinkers of the globalization. Focus of interest are elements of the theories of R. Robertson and G. Ritzer that are relevant for the context of the development of social thought on the phenomenon of globalization. Ronald Robertson recognized globalization “as a concept that refers both to the compression of the world and the intensification of consciousness of the world as a whole” (Robertson, 1992, p.8). Robertson, as a result of the globalization constructed a glocalization based on the link between the global and the local. In Ritzer’s work, “globalization is the worldwide diffusion of practices, expansion of relations across continents, the organizations of social life on a global scale, and the growth of a shared global consciousness” (Ritzer, 2007, p.4). He described globalization by the processes of grobalization capitalism, americanization and McDonaldization which are present in all spheres of social life. The concluding part of the paper provides an overview of the two authors’ theories of the global society, emphasizing their contribution to the body of theoretical analyses of the phenomenon of globalization. Today, these two conceptions of globalization are most fundamental, most representative and prolific for the cultural interpretation in the global space.
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Governments in the region routinely censor online speech for short-term political goals. Could Uzbekistan reverse the trend?
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Interview with The Guardian comes days after daughter of late Uzbek president sent off to a prison colony for violating terms of her home imprisonment.
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Artykuł omawia zagadnienia praworządności i ochrony praw człowieka na tymczasowo okupowanych terytoriach Ukrainy. Na podstawie analizy sytuacji prawnej na Krymie i terytoriach niekontrolowanych przez Ukrainę na Wschodzie określono aktualne problemy ochrony praw człowieka. Zaproponowano zestaw konkretnych środków mających na celu ich rozwiązanie w kontekście współczesnego stanowienia i wykonania prawa. Przyjmuje się, że istnieje potrzeba uznania ochrony praw i wolności człowieka na tymczasowo okupowanych terytoriach jako kierunku strategicznego polityki państwa w ustawodawstwie krajowym, dokumentach strategicznych, a także w programach rozwoju państwa.
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This mixed methods study examines context factors, mechanisms and outcomes of sexual difference in two post-Yugoslav societies after the outburst of the 2008 financial crisis and the implementation of anti-discrimination bills (2008/2009) in Croatia and Serbia. The European Values Survey (EVS 2008) documented the high degree of homophobic attitudes in post-Yugoslav societies. Banned pride parades in Belgrade (2011-2013), right-wing hate speech and violence in Belgrade and Split (2010/2011), as well as the Croatian referendum on constitutional protection of heterosexual marriage are illustrating events of homophobic outbursts. The analysis indicates that the Serbian context circulates rather around public visibility of sexual difference, whereas in Croatia legal-symbolic equality and recognition are more dominant. In both cases sexual difference is linked with pillars of pluralistic democracy and liberal-permissive multiculturalist tolerance. Sexual difference becomes a metaphor for the liberal-democratic transition of peripheral European societies. However, a prohibitive mechanism of closure including populist pro-life grassroots movements opposes “gender ideology” and “homosexual propaganda” thereby clashing with liberal-secular concepts, like pluralism and anti-discrimination. In both countries only partial concessions for sexual difference are granted in the sphere of public visibility (Serbia) and same-sex partnerships (Croatia) due to the successful resistance of homophobic populism.
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This study aims to examine the civilizing impact that a writer should possess under a republican government, as expressed in Germiane de Staël’s works of literary and political theory. The redefinition of the art of writing carried out by Staël is analyzed in the context of French history at the turn of the 18th and 19th centuries, as it was an attempt to overcome the intellectual crisis caused by the political and cultural changes of that period. The classical opposition between a writer, a philosopher and an orator appears unproductive, as the free and „philosophical” word specific to the republican regime is engaged in the same emancipative and enlightening transfer of energy through the enthusiasm shared both by its addresser and receiver. Philosophy and liberty form one and find their fullest expression in literary production, which is considered as a parole, a vibrant, active word. Literature gains thus the status of an existential experience that shapes the human consciousness. Therefore the writer-philosopher is both the guarantee and the ‘work’ of a republican regime, the vector of a socio-political change, of liberation and lumières.
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The article presents selected political determinants such as neutrality or federalism of political education in Switzerland, specifically taking into consideration their role in building democracy as well as identity and the development of civic competences. This paper also outlines the terminological problems in civic education from the Polish and German language perspective and the institutional and legal determinants used in political education. The conclusions drawn from the analysis can be useful in social studies or in the implementation of innovative system solutions in civic education.
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Today’s regional news: Reflections on Putin’s career; an anguishing prisoner swap; more legal trouble for Hungary’s MOL; Sputnik out of Estonia; and Polish education policy.
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The paper advances a new comprehensive complex approach to the investigation of the civili- zational aspects in the development of regional associations of countries. The research starts with the overview of historical dimensions of the civilizational approach and the contribution of the founding scholars to its development. It continues with the analysis of the scientific and methodological input of the followers and the critics of this approach. The authors suggest their theoretical approach to the identification of the modern local civi- lizations according to six parameters: natural, biological, technical, economic, social, and gov- erning. The civilizational affiliation of countries and the civilizational structure of major 17 regional associations of countries are identified. The results demonstrate that some regional groups have been more homogeneous in terms of civilizational composition, others – less homogeneous, which does not interfere with their dynamic development. However, the logic of the historical dynamics of human development indicates the inevitability of changing the current situation through prolonged civilizational conflicts resulting in significant changes in the global social dynamics and the civilizational structure of the world and of regional associations of countries. The identification of the civilization structure of countries and regional associations contrib- utes to the rational decision-making in the areas of international economic relations and to the formation of the integration/disintegration policies on the national and regional levels. It is predicted that from 2030 global social dynamics will undergo a fundamental break- through that will radically change the civilizational structure of the world and regional unions of countries.
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The article investigates the role of non-governmental organizations as subjects (actors) of Ukrainian politics of memory, as well as the mechanisms used by them to influence the forma- tion of the historical memory of Ukrainian society. The authors resort to comparative qualita- tive research, using an empirical-interpretative version of the method of studying specific cases (case study). The objects of analysis are: the Center for the Study of the Liberation Movement, “Tkuma” Ukrainian Institute for Holocaust Studies, and the Babyn Yar Holocaust Memorial Center. The results of the study indicate that NGOs are actively influencing the process of form- ing the historical memory of Ukrainian society. Methods of such influence can be both direct (through various educational activities) and indirect (through interaction with state institutions responsible for the implementation of national memory policy). The effectiveness of this influence is determined by such important factors as the availability of sponsors with significant financial means and/or lobbyists in government agencies and institutions that are part of the state memory policy infrastructure.
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As criminologist Martin Innes emphasises in his comprehensive research „Understanding Social Control. Deviance, Crime an Social Order”, the principal logics and practices of social control have been profoundly transformed by the development and proliferation of surveiliance tehnologies. Surveillance has belonged traditionaly to policing but in late-modernity, the conducting of surveillance has infiltrated a variety of public and private areas. The development and dispersal of the technologies for the monitoring of coduct, as one of the principal modes via wich late-modernity societies, seek to modify behaviour, reglate deviance and respond to problems of social order, including societal level. Ethically speaking, the proliferation of „electronic eyes”, in both public and private spaces, represents a top difficult moral and axiological dilemma, regarding the pervasive expansion of „control net” and the imperative of protection the fundamental values of freedom and human dignity. In this paper, I will try to examine some of the dimensions of surveillance and its multifaced application, mainly observing the framework designed by Martin Innes and the other criminologists engaged in significant ontological and epistemological analysis of surveillance.
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This study attempts to describe the partisan and dangerous role that the electoral judge plays in order to regulate the litigations related to the electoral disputes of the presidential and legislative elections in French-speaking Africa and particularly in Gabon and DR Congo. Attention was paid to the litigation of the presidential and legislative elections of 2016 in Gabon and those of 2011 and 2018 in DR Congo. The general economy of the electoral law in the two aforementioned countries, recognizes the competence of the Constitutional Court in the litigations related to presidential and national legislative elections. However, the work of the constitutional courts presented above, really denotes an appointment missed in a state of law, the finding remains mixed with respect to the contribution of the electoral judge in the legitimization of the electoral process and final results. As a result, the judgments of two Courts evoked only amplified post-election violence alongside political speeches fuelled by protests and popular manipulation, which caused massive violations of human rights through a bloody crackdown on protesters, and the endorsement of electoral push in Gabon and the DRC.
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The article presents selected elements of the civil society in Moldova during 2016-2018. In the state, which was established in 1991 as a result of the Soviet Union collapse, the structures of civil society faced numerous difficulties, of both internal and external nature. The most important internal factors are social passiveness and deficit of in-depth communication between authority and non-governmental organizations, while the external factor is a promotion of the idea of civil society as a part of European integration.
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The purpose of this study was to identify long-term trends in conventional participation in the Federal Republic of Germany. The time frame for the analysis covered the period between 1946 and 2016. Conventional participation was measured against two variables using regression analysis: the level of participation in elections and the level of membership in political parties. For both variables, statistically significant development trends were identified, which were mainly of a declining nature. The data employed concerned voter turnout in elections to the Bundestag and Landtags, and the development process of membership levels in six major political parties: CDU, SPD, CSU, FDP, Alliance 90/The Greens, and the Left/PDS.
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