THE DECREASE OF BUREAUCRACY, AN IMPORTANT INDICATOR IN ACCOMPLISHING THE INTERNATIONAL MISSIONS

Author(s): Brînduşa Maria Popa / Language(s): English Issue: 3/2008

The criticism of bureaucracy is already something very common and most of its critics only try to demolish it without finding something to replace it though. They state that there should be eliminated what is in excess or superfluous; if we cover ourselves with papers it does not mean that our work is effective; we need to keep a record of our activities, it is necessary to fulfill certain formalities but without trying to use this just to justify our existence. Yes, all these things are true, then, what is the solution? A possible solution would be the hybrid models, or as some experts have said “light bureaucracy ", "soft bureaucracy". This type of bureaucracy imposes rules to the employee but at the same time allows the freedom for initiative since the efficiency of the work is very important. Cutting down on red tape can be obtained through decentralization, empowerment and stimulating employee initiative which will its activity through an increase in efficiency.

Wstęp

Author(s): Alicja Stępień-Kuczyńska,Michał Słowikowski,Agata Włodarska-Frykowska / Language(s): English,Russian,Polish Issue: 6/2017

PILIETINĖS VISUOMENĖS ORGANIZACIJŲ ĮSITRAUKIMAS Į VISUOMENĖS PROBLEMŲ SPRENDIMĄ: KOKYBINIS POŽIŪRIS

Author(s): Gražina Strazdienė / Language(s): Lithuanian Issue: 1/2019

Globalization and ongoing change processes are creating new demands for society, business organizations and educational institutions, driving the development of learning technologies, new strategies and patterns. Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) are strategically important participants in societal development, which are expected to play an important role in improving governance and regulations, increasing transparency and involving the public in addressing issues. Due to the lack of human and financial resources, it is difficult for Civil Society Organizations (CSOs) in Lithuania to delve deeper into existing issues and their essence as well as to provide concrete and qualitative solutions. In order to improve the involvement of society in solving societal issues and assist CSOs, higher educational institutions together with students and lecturers need to be involved in solving societal problems through scientific research.The paper analyzes the phenomenon of involvement of civil society organizations in solving societal problems and reveals the problems faced by CSOs, discusses how cooperation between civil society organizations and higher education institutions has taken place and how the public should be more actively involved in solving societal problems.A qualitative research was conducted using a semi-structured interview method. The study used targeted sampling. Interviews were conducted with 7 CSOs: 2 associations, 1 volunteer organization, 1 union, 2 public entities (NGOs), 1 community-based group , located in Vilnius and Klaipėda. The results of the study revealed the problems and difficulties faced by CSOs. Three categories “Societal problems/issues addressed by CSOs“, “Difficulties encountered by CSOs in solving societal problems/issues” and “Trends of collaboration between CSOs and HEIs in terms of research” reveal CSOs attitudes to the need for research, current collaboration with HEIs and trends of possible future It was identified that CSOs address the following issues: socialization problems, sectoral issues, lack of awareness and education. However, it has emerged that some interviewees not only found it difficult to identify societal problems in a broader sense, but also had a rather superficial perception of the research (in other words research activity was considered basically as unrelevant and incomprehensible for them). Interviewees often related societal problems only to professional (specific organizational) issues and organization's activities, which again confirms that research is neither a priority nor an important part of their activities in the future. CSOs addressing societal challenges encounter the following difficulties: lack of public services, lack of collaboration, insufficient financial resources, lack of information, lack of professionals. Interviews revealed that the majority of CSOs representatives did not have any experience of collaboration with HEIs in terms of research; they had some certain specific interactions and joint projects, but not for research.The following trends of possible collaboration between CSOs and HEIs are identified: conducting research, organizing conferences and events, conducting training, dissemination of CSOs activities.

Editorial

Author(s): NRHR NRDO / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2019

Laudatio pentru Mihnea Berindei

Author(s): NRHR NRDO / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2019

Interviu cu Mihnea Berindei

Author(s): Dan Oprescu / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2019

Interview with Mihnea Berindei

Prietenul meu, Kanji Tsushima, cel mai român dintre japonezi

Author(s): Mihnea Berindei / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2019

My friend Kanji Tsushima, the most Romanian of the Japanese

Mihnea Berindei a fost un om mare de trestie

Author(s): Kanji Tsushima / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2019

Mihnea Berindei was a great reed of a man

Transitions Online_Balkan Eye-In the Balkan Panoptikon

Author(s): Boyko Vassilev / Language(s): English Issue: 01/27/2020

A tale of a sporting celebration flared tempers across borders – not because of any violence, but because of the choice of songs.

Twenty Years Working with Neighbours. Citizen Participation, Is It Possible? What We Have Learned in 20 Years

Author(s): Antoni Remesar / Language(s): English Issue: 33/2019

In 1999, the Governing Council of the Universitat de Barcelona approved the creation of the POLIS Research Center. Later, in 2016, the Center was ratified after passing an assessment of the Catalan Accreditation Agency (AGAUR). The Centre has an interdisciplinary vocation and brings together researchers from different research groups at the University of Barcelona and cooperates with nine European and Ibero-American universities in the fields of Arts, Architecture and Human and Social Sciences. Academically, the Centre has promoted the doctoral program Public Space and Urban Regeneration (1998–2017) and the Master’s Degree in Urban Design: Art, City, Society (since 2007) and the publication of the journal "On the w@terfront". The research object of the Centre is the city and its public space and, more specifically, the role of citizens in the production of Public Art and Urban Design. For this reason, the work of the Centre covers the topics related to Urban Regeneration, Sustainability, Urban Governance, Civic Remembrance, Heritage. Throughout its twenty-year history, the Centre has developed a series of projects for citizen participation in various areas of the periphery of Barcelona: River Besòs (municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs) La Mina neighbourhood (municipality of Sant Adrià de Besòs) and the Barcelona’s neighbourhoods of Baró de Viver and Bon Pastor. A characteristic of the work of the centre has been, and is, the endorsement of citizen participation, through an innovative approach based on enabling the creative empowerment of the neighbours within the framework of Participatory Action Research. This approach is based on a project methodology, as it is understood in various project disciplines from Art to Architecture, from Design to Engineering. This article, associated with the itinerant exhibition “20 years working with neighbours,” reviews the founding project carried out by the Centre, “Social Uses of the River Besòs” (1997–1999), analysing the lessons learned, with the aim of clarifying the research criteria that the Centre follows for the development of citizen participation projects.

The Civil Servant's Diciplinary Offense

Author(s): Cosmin Ambrosă / Language(s): English Issue: 24/2019

Disciplinary liability of the civil servants is ordered according to the provisions of their Statute. Therefore, the civil servants make themselves guilty by violating the duties corresponding to the public function that they hold. According to the rules of this public function and to the professional and civic conduct rules provided by the law, the above mentioned violation constitutes a disciplinary offense and attracts their administrative and disciplinary liability.

WHY DO ROMANIANS TAKE TO THE STREETS? A SPATIAL ANALYSIS OF ROMANIA'S 2016- 2017 PROTESTS

Author(s): Alexandru-Sabin Nicula,Mihnea-Simion Stoica,Elena-Manuela Birsanuc,Titus Man / Language(s): English Issue: 2/2019

This article aims to analyse, both spatially and numerically, the protests that occurred in Romania between January 2016, immediately after the 2016 Parliamentary Elections and the attempt of the new elected party to change Romania’s constitution and legislations, and October 2017, triggered by several consecutive corruption acts. Methodologically, the analysis is based on a set of data provided by the Public Relations Department of the Romanian Gendarmerie. The statistical and cartographical analysis are focused on the main characteristics of the protests: place and triggering factors. Most protests (97%) take place in urban areas, and, during the analysed time frame, the following typologies are identified: Political System (59%), Economic Justice (37%), Human Rights (3%), Social Events (1%). The statistical model that resulted from the logistical regression is a strong predictor of the studied events, with a determination factor of 0.98, the main factors being the share of population with university studies, public expenses on healthcare, culture and education, as well as the unemployment rate, showing a high participation rate for the population with higher education that are living in areas where the authorities investment in culture and healthcare is significant. The results obtained through an interdisciplinary approach (geography, politics, statistics) improve the methodological matrix of mono-disciplinary studies and facilitate the inclusion in the same topic of experts from diverse domains.

SHAPING CIVIC ATTITUDES: PROTESTS AND POLITICS IN ROMANIA

Author(s): Clara Alexandra Volintiru,Cristina Buzașu / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

This article looks at the contemporary upsurge of activist citizenship in Romania. Our assessment is aimed at disentangling the contextual determinants, from the agency of the movements themselves. Our research is based on primary empirical evidence collected from semi-structured interviews, surveys, news coverage, and official documents. Our findings suggest that the shaping power of the contemporary civic protests in Romania is mostly related to their ability to change the public agenda and impact the decision-making bodies in determinant ways (i.e. resignation of political actors, or legislative and institutional reforms). Beyond concrete, short-term objectives, the recent wave of protest movements in this country, through iteration has managed to change citizen’s democratic expectations and create a contentious opposition towards previously well-established political forces. This latter aspect is a distinctive feature of the here analysed issue-driven protest episodes (i.e. civic protests), from traditional interest-driven protests. It also explains the genealogy of new competitive political actors in Romania, benefiting from new instruments of electoral mobilisation.

THE TYPE OF PARTICIPATION IN SOCIO-POLITICAL PROTESTS AS A FUNCTION OF POLITICAL ACTIVATION IN THE ERA OF SOCIAL MEDIA

Author(s): Grażyna Piechota,Robert Rajczyk,Volodymyr Lytvynenko,Viktoriia Grydchyna / Language(s): English Issue: 1/2020

The article deals with the key issue of the process of political activation of individuals in a state that is in the process of political and social modernisation, whose essential goal is the formation of a civil society. The subject of interest in the article is the impact of the type of participation in the protest, which took place in Ukraine at the turn of 2013 and 2014, referred to as "Euromaidan" or "Revolution of Dignity" on the political activity of individuals after the end of the events, in the period of systemic changes in Ukraine. Treating participation in protests as a function of political activation, surveys covered the attitudes and behaviour of individuals who took an active part in protests and those who only followed the events using social media. Surveys were carried out on the N-600 group, using the comparative method, analysing the impact of active and passive participation in protests on the attitudes of the respondents four years after the events (the research was carried out in the period of April-June 2018). The presented research results are part of the stream of analyses devoted to social and political protests as a form of political activation that supports the development of civil society. The presented research uses the type of participation, treating it as a matrix for measuring political activity, which was developed for the purpose of research.

Mozgalmi innovációk

Author(s): Dániel Oross / Language(s): Hungarian Issue: 2/2020

Mikecz Dániel: A globalizációkritikus mozgalom Magyarországon. Zöldek, Pacifisták, Házfoglalók. Budapest, L’Harmattan Kiadó, 2018. 226 p

On Civil Society and the Social Economy in Hungary

Author(s): Júlia Szalai,Sara Svensson / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2018

While the development of civil society organisations in Hungary has been impressive in terms of number and diversity, its influence has remained limited on policy-making. Administrative attempts to draw civil society under tight regulation and control have produced a blurring of the boundaries between the civil and the public spheres that, in turn, has impaired the independent voice and criticism of civil society. Therefore, economic acts based on solidarity and originating from civil society do not automatically form or increase a ‘social economy’ but become as contested by and as intermingled with political developments as other acts of civil society. This development also has affected the profile of civil activities: against the earlier impressive weight of anti-poverty, anti-racist and human rights engagements, the ‘non-risky’ activities of sports and leisure services have come to domination. A turn toward declining participation is a warning sign of the decreasing contribution of civil society to everyday democracy.

THE PARADOXES OF POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Author(s): Ana SCALCĂU / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

This paper will try to answer some of the main questions regarding political correctness and it will present some of the many paradoxes of this controversial phenomenon. The more political correctness tries to correct the social inequalities, the more inequalities it creates, the more it tries to put an end to conflicts, the more conflicts it generates, the more inclusive it claims to be, the more it excludes those who oppose it, the more progressive it wants to be, the less progress it brings about.

A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE ON POLITICAL CORRECTNESS

Author(s): Ana SCALCĂU / Language(s): English Issue: 4/2020

The objective of this paper is to present some of the most relevant moments which have influenced the evolution of political correctness and to reveal the connection between these moments. The phenomenon appeared in America as an attempt to help certain categories of people which had been previously misrepresented or overlooked. In the 60’s it became part of the ideology of the American New Left, who helped it spread to the universities, inspired by cultural Marxism, German philosophy and postmodernism. Globalization has brought political correctness to Europe, but the Western countries have been more receptive to it than Eastern ones, which have experienced communism and could not help noticing the similarities.

The role of civil society organizations in the democracy-related processes of Zimbabwe

Author(s): Dan Petrica / Language(s): English Issue: LIX, 2/2020

Civil society organizations represent a substantial resource for translating democratization processes to the grassroots, ensuring the usage of local and international knowledge, and mobilizing communities to act in pursuit of bettering their own social circumstances. This paper aims to shed light on the way in which non-governmental organizations (NGOs) have developed in Zimbabwe since the 1980’s, while particularly emphasizing their constantly shifting relationship with state structures, which transited stages such as: cooperation,subservience, and opposition. The said stages are not linear, nor are they general,nonetheless, they apply to great numbers of varying organizations throughout distinct periods, allowing us to categorize in our attempt to provide an overview.Furthermore, the relationships developed with donors and the population also delved upon, as we try to underline the way in which foreign governments and umbrella organizations chose to pursue the consolidation of democracy in Zimbabwe, especially in the wake of Robert Mugabe’s prolonged autocratic slippages. We argue that as the donor culture of Zimbabwean NGOs, which encourages the pursuit of democratic practices, clashed with the nationalist-fueled authoritarian practices of the ZANU-PF party-state, the said types of civil society organizations began to truly mobilize social movements, in pursuit of the common good of the citizens of Zimbabwe.

Încălcarea libertății academice. Un „complot” emblematic care a implicat SNSPA

Author(s): NRHR NRDO / Language(s): Romanian Issue: 4/2020