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Despite the progress registered by the Romanian political culture, the democratic balance remains fragile due to the low participation of citizens to the associative life and political decision, and in the same time, one can't yet rely on the fact that political actors position themselves impersonally towards the formal institutional practice. Romanian democracy frequently encounters challenges coming from the political actors – who tend to adjust the functioning mode of the consecrated democratic institutions a...

The paper presents different views of the threats posed to Swedish security as well as diverging stances on further development of the state's defense and security policy within the context of the recent heated debates among the Swedish political elite. Particular attention is paid to the current direction of the Stockholm's security policy that represents a non-alignment strategy in combination with close collaboration within the frameworks of NATO and is highly unlikely to be changed after the forthcoming parlia...

EU energy security discourse took a new path during recent years and more then accessibility to foreign fossil resources, new issues related to electricity markets and environmental security aroused. However, in our article we argue that these two issues are far from being independent as, despite all the progress, fossil fuels were responsible for some half of electricity generation in EU in 2013. With respect to multiple attempts to conceptualize framework for examining energy security that recommend ultidimensio...

The study aims to examine the role of reform of state apparatus in the process of consolidations of democracy. By applying a theoretical framework of Juan Linz and Alfred Stepan (five arenas of consolidation) on the development in Brazil, the author outlines the relationship between the reform of bureaucratic apparatus and the development of the other four arenas: civil society, political society, rule of law and economic society. The paper undertakes a description of the reforms of state apparatus Brazil and anal...

The creation of a common European Union energy market aims at creating conditions of unrestrained and flexible exchange of electricity and natural gas among Member States (MS). The aim to the article is to evaluate the condition of the gas infrastructure of EU MS in the scope of concepts of the creation of a internal gas market. The analysis of the capacity of the existing interconnectors will allow to determine the potential level of natural gas exchange among MS.In view of these facts the question regarding the ...

The countries of the Visegrad Group (V4) are dependent on the natural gas import from Russia which uses the supplies of this raw material to achieve its political goals. The purpose of this paper is to analyse the demand for natural gas, its extraction and the import structure in the V4 countries. The indexes of the energy security and the levels of concentrations on the V4 markets have been compared. The conclusions drawn from the research analysis are to determine the activities that are to increase the energy s...

The working is devoted to a critique of the liberal rethinking such nodal categories for the Russian science though (philological, linguistic, philosophical, ethnological and others) as the Russian nation, nationality and Russian idea. Rethinking is carried out by the liberal authors under influence of the American mythologism, pragmatism, the concept of conditional (conventional) linguistic sign. The methods of the application in the USA mentioned artificial concepts were introduced in social life and politics lo...

Within the framework of the pivotal reforms of administrative governance the process of decentralization has acquired a new momentum in Kazakhstan under the challenges of the new century. It is linked to the fact that decentralization leads to optimization of public functions and facilitates a more rational model of inter-budget relations that ensure the sustainable operation on all levels of state institutions. We should admit that in Kazakhstan movement towards decentralization goes by leaps and bounds. The obje...

Cultural pessimism is one of the typical features of right-wing political extremism. It plays also a pivotal role in the research presented here which was focused on the construction of identity of activists from the extremist scene in Central Europe. A method used in the research was a narrative interview with leaders of extremist movements and parties in Central Europe. Narrators were telling their life stories and then were asked, how they reflect contemporary society. In telling their life stories narrators sh...

A lot of countries have implemented e-government initiatives to further enhance public sector efficiencies and streamline governance systems to support sustainable development. Though there are enough studies in the area of e-government, development of e-government in the countries of the Eastern Border of the European Union (EU) has not been investigated yet. E-government level and tendencies of its development in the Eastern Border of the European Union during the period of 2003–2012 are analysed in this artic...

The study aims to examine the role of reform of state apparatus in the process of consolidations of democracy. By applying a theoretical framework of Linz and Stepan (five arenas of consolidation) on the development in the Czech Republic, the author outlines the relationship between the reform of bureaucratic apparatus and the development of the other four arenas. The paper undertakes a description of the unsuccessful attempts to reform state apparatus in the Czech Republic that led to the formation of the client ...

This paper deals with the problems of corporate social responsibility (CSR) business in the territorial aspect. The main emphasis is on the analysis of the essence of CSR and the specificity of its manifestations in Russian business. Indicates the trend of formation and development of the Russian model of CSR. Particular attention is paid to the analysis of corporate social responsibility core enterprises located in mono. Calculation of the authors' methodology and proposed set of indicators to assess the level of...

Military education system is recently challenged by negative trends such as demographic with lower part of young generation, financial with diminishing defense budgets as well as growing civilian universities sector. Those long-term circumstances change military education and training itself to a new format leaving university ambitions and to focus to military training only using absolvents graduated at civilian universities.

Our study deals with relatively unexplored problem of corruption in sport, while Czech and Slovak football serve as a model. It proves and concludes that corruption in this area is most probably far reaching, while most cases of corruption will remain undetected. While introducing the main instruments, we proceed from the standard economic theory of corruption and conclude that key areas to improve are the level of risk exposure of corruption behavior (i.e. increasing “costs” of corruption) and appeal to chang...

The article presents study on determinants of development of the employment of people with disabilities in Poland. There were carried out 197 In-Depth Interviews among employers to diagnose determinants of motivation of employment of people with disabilities and related barriers and difficulties. Analysis of collected data were carried out with exploratory factor analysis to identify relations between measured variables.

Background: Numerous surveys report the rising number of workplace violence incidents. Eight European social partner organisations operating in a range of sectors in which employees are exposed to third-party violence in the employment relationship have now adopted a supplementary set of Multi-sectoral guidelines to tackle work-related third-party violence and harassment. The prevalence of client-initiated occupational violence in health and social services has motivated us search for causes of this destructive be...

Collapse of the USSR and the world socialist system, that happened more than twenty years ago actualized processes of implementation of national models of political modernization related to democratization and liberalization of society and state. Russia implements etatist model of political modernization, involving, on the one hand, the structural and functional modernization of the Russian state as a political institute, and on the other - the production of specific mechanisms of interaction between government an...

At the beginning of the XXI century is actualized the task of political analysis of general and specific characteristics of the manifestation of the threats and risks inherent to the life of societies and states, members of the European Union, as well as Russia, constantly and deliberately positioning itself as the largest country of Eurasia. From our point of view, in Russia due to genetic relationship with Western civilization, which theoretically justified the possibility of the socialist experiment, there are ...

The main goal of this paper is to analyze the voting behaviour of the Bulgarians and Romanians in the European elections, in order to identify the similarities and the differences regarding the results, the rate of the electoral participation and the interest for these elections. To that effect, we stress out the disparities between the declared enthusiasm of the population concerning the European elections (and their countries' integration in the European Union in general) and the discouraging voter turnout, at t...

Hungary joined World War II alongside Germany in order to get back its territories lost at the end of World War I. However, the co-operation was only partial: the Hungarian Government did not fulfil several German claims (using the entire armed forces at the front lines, German control over the economy, and deportation of the Jews). In 1943, Hungary started secret negotiations with the Western Allies in order to quit the war, and in September, it accepted the preliminary conditions of an armistice. The Carpathian ...

The European Union is a very dynamic organization, which from the time of its formation until now, has undergone legal and institutional reforms. From the 1990's, the interest of the EU has been very dynamic in supporting the Republic of Macedonia and the Western Balkan countries in the process of political and economic transformation; during this period, the EU began develop a regional approach to the Western Balkans. Macedonia's key relations with the European Union date back to the year 1996 and continues to th...

This study aims to analyze differences between gender attitudes of migrants and local population in 8 countries of Western and Northern Europe. It tests whether migrants from developing countries, especially from the Muslim world, tend to follow European trends in their attitude towards gender equality or they tend to treat gender equality issues in the same manner as in their countries of origin. This topic is of particular importance as attitudes towards women's rights are proven to be a strong predictor of supp...

In the wake evolving crisis in the Crimea, the other side of the Black Sea descended into political turmoil. Demonstrations calling for resignation of de facto President took the streets of de facto state of Abkhazia, a region of “frozen” conflict since 1992. The subject of analysis of this article is to uncover factors that formulated the attitudes of conflict parties toward each other, conceptualization of this armed conflict by Georgian administration and Abkhazian political elites, as well as changes in th...

The dynamical development of the Slovak economy called for the realisation of the variety of changes in the field of the Slovak enterprise management. The building of the economy based on the knowledge became the building of the organisation oriented in the active application of the knowledge, skills and informations. The above fact actually relates also to the control of the bodies of the public self-government and territorial self-government. The Government is fully aware of the fact that Slovakia needs a proper...

In the Czech Republic new non-profit nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) were established and replaced the previous centrally-controlled state organizations since 1989. Currently, over 100 thousand are registered there. Since this time NGOs are developing together with their mutual cooperation with profit organizations. It forms social pillar in corporate social responsibility concept. The cooperation is supported indirectly by state with tax base reduction in case of financial gifts provided to NGOs. The coopera...

While sovereignty remains a hallmark of the increasingly globalized international system, the major powers are in particularly interested in offering directions to global politics, by taking the lead in formulating goals and policies, and thus promoting their vision. The present paper considers that these plans can be regarded in the terms of “hegemonic” enterprises - projects directed by a great power/ group of great powers for influencing other states through the interaction rules and public goods provided. ...

The paper deals with the management of employeesВґ performance in the institutions of the state administration of the Slovak Republic and its comparison with selected OECD countries. The possibilities to enhance the performance of the state administration employees were depicted on the basis of the survey carried out on a sample of 192 respondents of the Financial administration of the Slovak Republic (FASR). In this context, the research question was formulated and its answer may identify current motivation of em...

Under the condition of forcing industrial and innovative processes and creation of UEA there is an objective need to develop scenarios for the competitiveness of uniting the key strategic provisions of programs of modernization of economy of Belarus, Kazakhstan and Russia. Changing the structure of the economy becomes an obligatory condition to overcome the negative structural trends, especially in the fuel and energy and food complex, but as above-mentioned, in the absence of energy and food export-import policy ...

When Iranian nuclear programme as well as its involvement in Syria in combination with a strong antagonism against own Israeli existence create significant threat, which might not be omitted. Subsequently, it seems to be important to outline possible scenarios of war conflict outcomes, if reciprocal threat will crescent to inevitable power answer. Such conflict will have strong impact to adjacent Arabian countries, the European Union members and United States of America as well.

Study offers an attempt to a systematic approach to the problematic of current and potential impact of regionalization and regionalism on contemporary international relations. Estimation of the results of last European Parliament elections suggests that a large proportion of its new members would be selected from among the opponents of European integration. This is certainly unpleasant consideration since most of the critics of integration have been in the previous period from outside of the European Union institu...

This paper analyzes the relationship between political changes and the press in the years of 1989 and 1990, which will be illustrated with an analysis of local newspapers published in the town of Zadar, Croatia. The paper is based on the analysis of articles on political changes published in local Croatian newspapers Narodni list and Fokus. The period analyzed here covers the time when monthly publication of Fokus was published, i.e. from February 8, 1989 to September 22, 1990. The period, among other things, was ...

The article, written on the basis of the results of participant observation, analysis of documents of Muslim educational institutions, publications of the Muslim organizations of the post-Soviet Tatarstan, periodicals, secondary research, describes the development of the modern system of Muslim education in Tatarstan through the prism of use of its capacities in countering the spread of the ideas of radical movements. The author analyzes the structure of the religious (Islamic) education in the region. There is al...

Parliamentary life as a dominant pattern of expression of representative democracy,is often characterized by parliamentary political crisis. Democracy does not represent a perfect system of values and a system of desires and dealism of people. Democracy primarily represents a permanently developing process, which is characterized by constant conflict of interests in attempts to influence political policy and lining of the political and democratic life actors. This political conflict is best expressed in parliament...

The paper devotes to the problem of equal integration of the States of Sub-Saharan Africa into the global informational and communicational space. Author argues that during of the postcolonial history the governments of Africans countries tried to reduce the dependence from well-developed nations. But their desire to become a part of global informational and communicational space actually encourages the increase of the dependence but not the reduction of it.

The process of NATO enlargement received rather strong and exhausting criticism both in the academic and political sphere. However, only very few of the dire predictions about the negative impact of NATO enlargement have come true. No new dividing lines have been drawn in Europe. The new NATO members have always supported the NATO open door policy and have tried to help further NATO candidate states to get ready for the NATO enlargement. The deterioration of the NATO ability to provide collective defence has been ...

The paper reflects some of the recent researches and observations of the author about the new trends in the transformation of the political spectrum. The traditional political families underestimated the appearance of The Greens in the mid 70's and 80's. Now the green ideology is well known to the public and the green followers especially in Europe represent a formidable power. Till 2006 The Greens were a lonely riders on the political arena as a nontraditional actor, but with the existence of The Pirates that is ...

Since the end of the Cold War, NATO has been going through a permanent adaptation process that has changed NATO beyond recognition. Many scholars and politicians reached the conclusion that NATO had become an organization more similar to a collective security organization than a traditional military alliance. Although the changes in NATO were very fundamental, they do not justify such a radical conclusion. NATO is further focused on dealing with security threats coming from areas outside the territory of its membe...

The working is devoted to a critique of the liberal rethinking such nodal categories for the Russian science though (philological, linguistic, philosophical, ethnological and others) as the Russian nation, nationality and Russian idea. Rethinking is carried out by the liberal authors under influence of the American mythologism, pragmatism, the concept of conditional (conventional) linguistic sign. The methods of the application in the USA mentioned artificial concepts were introduced in social life and politics lo...

The phenomenon of process management has belonged for recent times to the most interesting topics for specially purposed discussions in Slovakia as well as abroad. It becomes the matter of interest and also of professional discussion among the managers in private and state sectors reflecting the period of life where there are specific expectations on one hand to place the demands on effective work of organizations but on the other hand on their living out procedure in the area of fast competitive growth of other i...

Contracting entities choose criteria to evaluate bids for public contracts. The Act on Public Contracts offers two basic ways to evaluate bids for public contracts: the lowest tender price and the economic advantageousness of the tender. The economic advantageousness of the tender consists of the price and other criteria chosen by contracting entities. The importance of the price in case of economic advantageousness is lower than in the case of the lowest tender price. The basic evaluation criteria affect number o...

The Act on Public Contracts defines two basic evaluation criteria: the lowest tender price and the economic advantageousness of the tender. The paper concentrates on the price, discusses its advantages and disadvantages, risks and consequences of the evaluation according to the price. The analysis of the usage of the price is based on the data from the Czech Republic from years 2011 - 2013. Contract notices were collected from the Information System on Public Contracts, large data file consisting of several thousa...

This paper is based on a research among elite leaders of right-wing extremist organizations operating in Central Europe. This research primarily dealt with a process the activistsВґ identity has been constructed, especially in relation to personal experience and reflection of social changes since the fall of the socialist totalitarian regimes to present day. One of the research questions explores how they perceive their own freedom, freedom of others and how they understand the concept of freedom in general. A met...

The given work is connected with the concept of extremism, which is one of the key problems of the modern world, and the football fans movement as a part of an extremist one. The urgency lays in the importance of studying football extremism discourse. The object of the work is the football extremism discourse. The data of the research are articles and books about football fans from the Internet sources. Methods of the research are analysis of dictionary definitions and component analysis. It has been established t...

Gender equality has not been an objective for the first policies of private sphere. Policies of gender equality have followed a slow and arduous path, entering the public sphere first and only much later the private sphere. In Romania, although the communist regime has implemented policies of equality in the public sphere, it was not interested in gender equality in the private sphere After 1990, policies of gender equality in the private sphere were implemented, unfortunately often without an authentic public deb...

Socially responsible corporations is considered from the standpoint of the search for a balance of interests among all stakeholders. The specificity of current Russian practice of corporate social responsibility is analyzed from the point of view of necessity of creation of specific mechanisms, combining a socially responsible corporate strategy with effective partnerships with public authorities. The author argues that the organizational expression of such interaction become economic institutions, able in practic...

Social aspects of interaction of authority and business discussed from the point of view of assessment of efficiency of application of tools of solving social and environmental problems of defining business activity in the territories of presence. In accordance with the Russian specificity of the interaction of state bodies and business structures in the territory of presence proposed to be implemented in the framework of the model of social partnership through the exchange of resources as the basis of relations o...

In Macedonia lacks scientific efforts to elucidate the right of Albanians for a constituent status in the constitutional level, supporting him in the historical background and taking into account the real demographic interethnic structure in this republic. Indeed, the Krusevo Republic (1903) presents the direct source for Albanians statebuilding since they were introduced in the state subject and constituent element. The effort made for the progress of the position of Albanians in the republic with the constitutio...

Background In the last decade, many national governments have promoted sustainability reporting by adopting laws and regulations that specifically mandate such forms of disclosure. This paper examines how Estonian legal acts support sustainability reporting within local governments, which have been the cornerstones of the existence of the modern Estonian state and nation – as our famous scientist and politician Juri Uluots maintained in 1933 [1]. Methods In this case study, content analysis was used as a qualita...

The aim of the following paper is to analyze how the local cultural government and his formal or nonofficial cultural policy in condition of the Czech Republic can help to the small and medium subjects from the culture sector, support them and the regional development also. Qualitative research as a part of two research projects was done through the semi-structured interviews. Partial results and findings are available at this moment, but seems to be able to help in practical life of municipalities already. We int...

A significant cultural shift in the global community is reflected in a dramatic form in the cultural processes for over the last 30 years. This paper will analyze the focus of modern fascism (neo-fascism) on the atomization of national cultures, disintegration of international community, legitimacy of racial nationalism and other aspects which significantly actualize further studies of the given phenomena. We consider the problem through the prism of “cultural images” of fascism and the principles of its forma...