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Rocznik Lubuski
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2010
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vol. 36
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issue 2
164-178
EN
For over 20 years we have been witnessing fundamental social, political and economic changes in post-communist countries. One cannot point out a single model of internal transformations, which are shaped by complex factors-historical, economic, civilisational, ethnic, religious and political. Although legal and constitutional norms are based on stable Western European democracies (France, Germany), political practice leaves a lot to be desired. One can point out decreasing interest in public matters, diminishing trust in political classes, increasing threats to security, and corruption. Social expectations are being used by new political parties such as VV in the Czech Republic, SaS in Slovakia, Jobbik in Hungary, or GERB in Bulgaria.
EN
In search of different way (don't confuse with Giddens' third way) of development and making good society author refers to Muslim and Confucian values of East, economic inequalities (the rich getting richer, the poor getting poorer), and democratization process. Cultural differences between East and West consist among other things in stressing on value of community and social obligations or on value of individual freedom and rights. All questions about social order have to refer to tensions between these points of view. What we need is new normative system which resolves this tension in a new and better way in contrast to eastern authoritarianism or western individualism. Etzioni's communitarianism is a good starting point to consideration of possibilities which are still open contrary to Fukuyama's end of history hypothesis. The main obstacles to new better world are economic growth with economic inequalities and other side effects, lack of efficient and effective social arrangements and low level of social capital. The author shows many indicators from global development reports (World Bank, UNDP) and other sources to prove hypothesis of deepening economic inequalities in global scale and in Polish society. He regards this trends as unjust and rejects them on moral grounds. The last part of article considers different strategies of democratization in a bitterly divided world.
EN
The main goal of the article is to define new kind of artistic practice - public art. The author presents fundamental formulations of this phenomenon in art criticism and history of art, and proposes his own approach. According to it public art is such a kind of artistic practice, which takes place outside traditional artistic institutions and whose main goal is to create public sphere and to materialize democratic order. The article contains some reflections upon public art genesis and evolution and argues that public art shouldn't be defined as another kind of art because it is a very particular specific cultural practice. The author also attempts to present changes of public art in the last four decades and create classification of public art genres.
EN
The author's aim was to present the political organization of the African Union's society and to clarify the reasons for the failure of democratization in Africa. He claims that social cohesion and mobilization in African reality has a different context than in the reality of highly-developed Western states. Establishment of the African Union met with numerous interpretations concerning the effectiveness of its mechanism. Though the African Union was programmed as a political commonwealth modeled on the general political framework of the European Union, it reflects a different process of development of its component sub-communities. While establishment of the European political commonwealth was preceded by creation of the economic and social communities, the African political commonwealth is aimed at initiating and supporting the economic and social communities which facilitate the strengthening of the continental unity. Democratization was to be one of the elements of the civilization-bearing mission coming from the Western world, whose political patterns were presented as universal. Two aspects of African democratization are related to the process of decolonization and modernization. From the very beginning it was pointless to expect in the African reality any analogy to the European reality. The increasing economic involvement of the African state followed first of all from the specifics of the society, which had not yet completed the process of the transition from the tribal society to the civic society. In African states, the society did not yet exhibit full individuality in undertaking economic activity in the newly established state space. Another aspect of African democratization is related to globalization. The policy of African governments in the modernization period was based on the belief in durability of the bipolar model of global political constellation. After the breakdown of the bipolar system of international relations the earlier diversification of the world economy gradually disappeared, and its globalization progressed. Such a change influenced the situation in African countries implying the necessity to accept the breakthrough and to open the economic space in the face of the growing freedom of capital flow. The enforced democratization in African states met both with approval and contestation. African criticism of the democratic procedure points out the external origins of democracy as a political system derived from foreign philosophy, having little in common with African reality. The African commonwealth hopes now to find support in the external environment. However, the regress of the Western open society undermines its promotional ability to enforce and support financially the democratic processes initiated in Africa.
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MĚNÍ SE PATRIARCHÁLNÍ REŽIM V MYANMARU?

88%
EN
After the elections in November 2015 Myanmar has had a new and, although some wouldn’t agree, democratic government. And the head of the new government is a woman – Aung San Suu Kyi. In a country where the government had been led by an army dominated by men for more than five decades, there is now a quasi-democratic government led by a woman. Could this fact imply that the situation of Myanmar’s women in general is improving? Does democratization have any implications for a gender regime that has been dominantly patriarchal for decades? And how do the democratisation process and the rising Buddhist nationalism effect the antidiscrimination agenda declared after the abandonment of military rule?
EN
The political importance of the EU–Ukraine association agreement – to say its vital existential role for the future of Ukraine and the dramatic event surrounding its conclusion overshadowed the pure legal aspects of its implementation. However, the commencement of its provisional application brings legal aspects to the front. At the current state, there is a gap between the Ukrainian constitutional order and the ultimate obligation of Ukraine to implement the binding decision of the supranational institutions established under the Agreement (Association Council and Committee). The successful experience of the countries of Central and Eastern Europe, which had the similar problems, shows possible solutions to the problem. Particularly, in Slovakia and Poland it was a constitutional reform with the introduction to the Constitution of separate articles legitimizing the status of documents, adopted by international organization, certainly including the Association Agreement institutions and later the European Union itself. This development created important legal prerequisites for further European integration of the countries, which ended up with full-scale EU membership. Moreover, the general trend of consolidating the principles of supremacy and direct applicability of the EU law at the level of national constitutional acts of member states reflects the specific features of the EU law application as well as its inter-connection and inter-dependence with the national legal systems. Therefore at the level of its constitution Ukraine has to accept the specific role of the EU law as a sui generis legal system. At the current stage the focus is certainly on the implementation of the Association institutions’ decisions, however, in a longer perspective there is a distinct need for the constitutional consolidation of principles governing the inter-relations of the EU law and national law of the member states – i.e. the principles of direct applicability and the supremacy. It is necessary to emphasize that despite the fact that EU law is not binding for Ukraine at this moment, it is important to use it at least as the 60 Ibidem. interpretive tool for the application of the national legislation due to the legislatively set goal of European integration. In this way the Ukrainian legal system will get rid of the limits, preventing it from exposition to the EU legal system, contributing to its independent development towards the standards already existing in the European Union. From this perspective the overcome of the mentioned constitutional gap is of critical importance for the creation of adequate procedures of the practical implementation of the Association Agreement.
Sociológia (Sociology)
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2021
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vol. 53
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issue 1
5 – 25
EN
Scholars have highlighted the role of an international linkage in subversion and stability of contemporary competitive authoritarian regimes. But how does an international linkage affect autocrats during elections? Researchers have suggested that linkage to the West raises the cost of government abuse in competitive authoritarian regimes because it increases the probability of Western governments taking action in response to reported abuse. Conversely, linkage to the authoritarian regimes decreases the cost of repression and manipulation in competitive authoritarian regimes because autocratic sponsors like Russia or China could support its allies internationally. I test the aforementioned assumptions on time series, cross-national dataset with observations of 143 elections in competitive authoritarian regimes between 1990 and 2010. I did not find support for the first part of this argument. Extensive international relations to the West do not affect repression and manipulation. On the contrary, linkage to the authoritarian regimes increases the level of repression and manipulation in competitive authoritarian regimes.
EN
The objects of analysis in the present article are historical images created by historians and, in particular, by historiographers and methodologists of history. Thus, its aim is to show the process of democratisation within the discipline at the background of the socio-cultural dispute about democracy itself. The material presented enables the revelation that there is a correlation between the image of history and political democracy: the former is dependent on political democracy, and at the same time it creates democracy. Through the knowledge that it generates, through the forms it takes and the content it communicates, history participates in a democratic discourse and constitutes the efflux of existing democratic practices. At the same time, it uses these diversified definitions to describe modern times. Democratic transformations preclude historical writings and knowledge to be isolated in an ivory tower of Academia: through its internal diversity, history becomes the practice aiming at the precise definition of democracy’s meanings. Analogically, modern times seem indispensably useful for history.
EN
Tis article presents in what way the specifc comprehension of tolerance’s notion has been formed in modern Polish society and how it is linked with some Poles’ attitudes towards diferent minorities. Consequently, two analytic models of Poles’ behaviors have been shown. Every studied behavior has been typically considered as ‘tolerant’ in Polish society. Moreover, two essential processes have been taken into consideration during creation of these models: frstly, the succession of norms and values, and secondly, the Polish society democratization.
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2019
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vol. 67
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issue 1
127 - 155
EN
This article makes a comparative analysis of political developments in Portugal and Czechoslovakia during the 1960s and early 1970s, focusing on the historic year ‘1968’ and its preconditions. The two countries experienced authoritarian regimes that went through a crisis of both a systemic and a moral kind, reaching a climax in 1968. In Czechoslovakia the liberalization policy of Alexander Dubček and his reform-communist coalition triggered spontaneous political and cultural activities among the population, which became a threat to the system of one-party rule. The Warsaw Pact invasion in August 1968 put an end to this experiment and the illusion of reform communism. The analysis of the causes, contradictions, and failure of liberalization remains a challenging subject for contemporary historians. Comparing the Czechoslovak experience with the evolution of the right-wing dictatorship in Portugal during the same period, may help to deepen our understanding of the nature and limits of authoritarianism in Europe. In Portugal the protracted regime of António Salazar came to an end in the same year 1968 after a series of manifestations of political crisis in the 1960s had shown its weaknesses and the inevitability of reform. However, his successor Marcelo Caetano maintained the regime’s authoritarian core and only carried out some cosmetic changes to keep Portugal with its colonies afloat. The Portuguese had to wait until 1974 for the regime to collapse, a short period of time, however, compared with the twenty-one more years that the Czechs and Slovaks had to wait. The extent of political space for opposition activity and the nature of elite disunity are among the critical questions examined in this article, which makes a comparison of Portugal and Czechoslovakia a challenging endeavour.
EN
Updating German heritage, especially on former Regained Lands, is related to the complex process of reminding (bringing back) multicultural past of Poland in transformation conditions — democratization and public spirited social life after 1989. This process refers to Poland as a whole, as well as regional and local one too. It concerns both practices revealing open regional policy accepting German heritage on western and northern parts of Poland and contrary ones typical for closed regional policy. In the first case due to open regional policy there appear in public sphere (are reminded) both German heritage — history and memory of Germans as former inhabitants of these territories, and those traditions, especially Polish thoughts related to the west, which used to serve the battle against the Germanization practices as well as promotion of Polish north and west as traditional Polish areas. However, advocates of closed regional policy, contradicting the updating of German heritage on these lands, express demand in politicians and social activist speeches as well as scientists, the re-Polonization of Wrocław, Gdańsk and Szczecin memories. In both cases the keyword is dispute associated with shaping open-closed regional policy concerning the former Regained Lands and arguments which are expressed in this dispute. Appealing to history and memory of Polish western and northern lands and to results of social inquires (carried out by us and other research groups) we present the process of forming the open regional policy in western and northern parts of Poland.
EN
With the new arrangement of Czecho-Slovak relations in Czechoslovakia in 1968, the need to address the status of Hungarian minority in Slovakia emerged inevitably. The Cultural Association of Hungarian workers in Czechoslovakia (Csemadok), a revived insitution recognized even by the Communist Party, became an unofficial representative of the Hungarian minority. It demanded the constitutional entrenchment of minority rights under the principle of self-government, establishment of national institutions and proportional representation of minorities in elected and executive bodies. Since negotiations about the definition of the constitutional status of nationalities soon came to a deadlock, the Constitutional Law on the status of nationalities was only adopted after the intervention, in October 1968. While the severely restricted constitutional law caused disappointment among nationalities, their leading representative did not give up hope that they could create an ethnic policy based on truly new foundations. Yet, due to the advancing „Normalisation“ process, their hopes and proposals failed to materialise. The ambition to address the legal status of ethnic minorities on the principles of equality and self-government was a unique initiative that was unprecedented in the former Soviet-bloc East-Central Europe. Rejection of a significant part of the demands by the Hungarian minority immediately before the occupation raises a question of whether further existence and potential victory of the democratization process would truly have created a chance for the minorities to have their demands met in full.
EN
The study is a response to the question: How has this society developed since the time of Ľ. Štúr from the point of view of the dynamics of national unity conditioned by the democratization of standard Slovak? For the development of the Slovak nation in the light of this language, democratization was of decisive importance, namely the control of the codified standard, and therefore linguistic correctness, and language-communication normality. The democratization of the codified norm and thus linguistic correctness has become the basis of the perception of language culture and a means of integrating the Slovaks as a national collective, ensuring their formal unity. The direction of the democratization of linguistic correctness is the optimal language culture as the control of a codified standard by basically every Slovak, but the democratization of the standard language also leads to the fact that it becomes the general mother tongue and natural linguistic correctness, i.e. natural language culture, is gradually enforced. This correctness and this culture are already manifestations of the transition of the national collective into a development phase of deeper – content, „true“ (according to Štúr) – unity and shifting attention from language to communication culture. The democratization of language-communication normality, which takes place as the expansion of the circle of „intimate language experts“ in the implementation of the adaptive potential of the language, in which the peculiarity of the mental culture – the „spirit of the nation“ – is manifested, is of fundamental importance for the turning point in the reorientation of the speakers of the standard language towards the communication culture. At this stage of development, the optimization of language culture grows into the optimization of communication culture governed by the principle of inclusion. In the Slovak language community, the discourse on authentic communication culture, based on a sense of collective identity, is becoming relevant.
EN
Singapore got a new Prime Minister in August 2004 - only the third one since 1959, and incidentally the son of the first. The ruling People's Action Party appears to be as firmly in power as ever before. However, under that apparent immobility, significant changes have taken place. Many are the consequences of a tremendous economic growth, almost uninterrupted since 40 years, and of some of its momentous effects: affluence, higher education level, openness to the wide world. Liberalization has especially affected culture and private life. But difficult, fundamental issues remain unsolved, and worrying: ethnic equilibrium, ideological definition, regional insertion… Democratization, still in infancy, has not made any progress since 15 years, and Singapore has the dubious privilege to be the most prosperous of the world's authoritarian regimes. A detour through the history of the last half-century will allow a better understanding of such a paradoxical country.
EN
The article aims at characteristics of the multiple approaches to the theory of the political culture of the Balkan countries. The text begins with a theoretical definition of the concept of the political culture, follows the analysis of the some views on culture and society in the Balkans. The study is focused mainly to three countries of the former Yugoslavia – Serbia, Croatia and Slovenia. The strong emphasis is given on the use of the cleavage theory. The author concludes that the cleavage theory can bring new empirically provable facts on research of political culture of the Balkan counties.
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