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This paper analyses the political career of a key executive body in the Slovenian local self-government system – the mayor. The paper first introduces incumbency advantage theories. These theories argue that the probability of electoral victory or defeat is not homogeneously distributed among the candidates, as several factors influence the possibilities of success of some candidates and the failure of others (seniority, membership of political parties, electoral performance, etc). Based on an analysis of objective data and data from an empirical survey conducted among mayors of Slovenian municipalities, we look at the re-election of mayors in Slovenian local self-government with the emphasis on their seniority. We find that the re-election of mayors is a frequent occurrence in Slovenia and is a trend that is also increasing with every local election from 1998 onward.

In England between the 16th and 18th centuries, laws and justice system for prosecuting the crime of "treasonable words" against the monarch were fueled largely by the events of Reformation, the English Civil War, and the French Revolution. During the period, the popular concern for the monarch's private life and the royal circle had evolved in several aspects. The phenomena of slandering and gossiping the monarch can be viewed as one of indicators for making sense of the political development of the time. Christian ideals, dynamics of oral culture, and the development of modern political value had also played important roles in shaping the understanding of "treasonable words" and the legal procedure concerning the crime.กฎหมายและระบบตุลาการเพื่อปราบปราม "วาจากบฏ" ต่อราชบัลลังก์ก่อรูปขึ้นในอังกฤษช่วงศตวรรษที่ 16 ถึง 18 โดยรับแรงส่งจากสภาวการณ์ทางการเมืองที่เกี่ยวเนื่องกับการปฏิรูปศาสนา สงครามการเมืองอังกฤษและการปฏิวัติฝรั่งเศส ทัศนคติต่อการแสดงออกทางวาจาพาดพิงองค์พระมหากษัตริย์มีการเปลี่ยนแปลงอย่างสูงในช่วงเวลานี้ ปรากฏการณ์วิจารณ์องค์พระมหากษัตริย์ในยุคต้นสมัยใหม่เป็นปรากฏการณ์หนึ่งที่ชี้วัดพัฒนาการทางการเมืองได้เป็นอย่างดี ประชาชนให้ความสนใจต่อเรื่องส่วนพระองค์ของอค์พระมหากษัตริย์เพิ่มขึ้น แบบแผนทางด้านเนื้อหาของการแสดงออกในเชิงสบถ ก่นด่า และวิจารณ์สะท้อนสถานภาพของราชบัลลังก์และวัฒนธรรมการเมืองในขณะนั้น นอกจากนี้ สิ่งที่ส่งผลต่อทัศนะเรื่องอาชญากรรมทางวาจาและการดำเนินคดีความยังประกอบด้วยคำสอนคริสต์ศาสนา ค่านิยมทางการเมืองแบบใหม่ และพลวัตของวัฒนธรรมมุขปาฐะ

How much and why do political parties emphasize Europe in election campaigns? The literature is increasingly focusing on two aspects of party issue competition: position and salience. However, recent studies on salience tend to ignore the fact that Europe is a compound political issue. This article contributes to the debate by highlighting the crucial difference between constitutive and policy-related European issues. Using data from the Euromanifestos Project for 14 EU member states for the period 1979–2009, we first show that Europe is much more salient in European Parliament elections than previously assumed. Second, EU issue salience depends on party position and party system polarization over European integration. However, different explanations come into play once we bring in the polity-vs.-policy distinction. This has important implications for our understanding of party competition on European integration.

Teachers in their teaching practice live different tensions related to political, social, economic and cultural demands. Teachers' decisions within the classroom are likely to have consequences beyond any academic scenario. Those decisions have an impact on students' perception of society and culture. On the one hand, teachers have some influence upon some of these sociocultural and self-concept related issues that shape students' upbringing. On the other hand, aspects such as family revenues, social dynamics, location and strata, role models, parents' literacy level, etc. exceed their means as they are part of a system concerning the social, political and economic establishment of the government. In public education, EFL teachers cannot afford to approach English as a mere subject to be taught. In fact, the great majority of them are homeroom teachers too.

All rights reserved. Except for brief quotations used for purposes of scholarly citation, none of this work may be reproduced in any form by any means without written permission from the publisher. For information address the University of Pennsylvania Press, 3905 Spruce Street, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania 19104-4112. ; The work of Herbert Spencer was a crucial influence on the development of Peter Kropotkin's historical sociology. However, scholars have underestimated this relationship; either overlooking it entirely, or minimizing Kropotkin's attachment to Spencer with the aim of maintaining the utility of his political thought in the present. This article contests these interpretations by analyzing Kropotkin's reading of Spencer's epistemological, biological, and political ideas. It argues that Kropotkin was engaged in a critical dialogue with Spencer, incorporating many Spencerian principles in his own system, but also using this reading to articulate a distinctive anarchist politics.

I propose a global history of modern Britain around an account of the rise, demise and reinvention of a liberal political economy that reified the market as the organising principle of government. It is a story that is inseparable from the growth and collapse of the British Empire, as well as the continuing, if precarious, global hegemony of the Anglosphere. The liberal political economy that germinated within the British Empire may have had a world system built around it, but events, processes and peoples far beyond the Anglosphere shaped the history of its rise, demise and reinvention. This history of Britain is then a global story, not because of that old imperial conceit that Britain made the world, but because the world made Britain. This article has been peer reviewed.

© 2016 Australian Historical Association. I propose a global history of modern Britain around an account of the rise, demise and reinvention of a liberal political economy that reified the market as the organising principle of government. It is a story that is inseparable from the growth and collapse of the British Empire, as well as the continuing, if precarious, global hegemony of the Anglosphere. The liberal political economy that germinated within the British Empire may have had a world system built around it, but events, processes and peoples far beyond the Anglosphere shaped the history of its rise, demise and reinvention. This history of Britain is then a global story, not because of that old imperial conceit that Britain made the world, but because the world made Britain. This article has been peer reviewed.

Impeachment of the president and / or vice president from office is not new in the constitutional system of Indonesia. Before the amendment, Indonesia also has a mechanism of impeachment that the President and / or Vice President may be removed from office, as had happened during the Sukarno and Abdurrahman Wahid. However, the impeachment process through a political process and a new law set in the 1945 amendment after amendment. The reasons for the impeachment of a limited manner specified in the constitution, although the reasons have a very wide interpretation and may be subjective, especially in a political institution in the House. There are several things that must be done to complete the impeachment mechanism rules in Indonesia, among others: (a) relating to the impeachment process in the House of Representatives; and (b) the impeachment proceedings in the Constitution Court.

This article brings the author ́s personal experience of training in art psychotherapy at a British university and returning to her home country Slovakia. The article presents the historical context of Slovakia on political, social and psychological levels and the impact of these factors on the development of art therapy. Art therapy training in Slovakia is scoped from early beginnings to the present day, mentioning organisations and individual people ́s contributions to contemporary art therapy. The author scrutinizes the place of art therapy in the Slovakian mental health system and is questioning of the current understanding of art therapy within Slovakia. The article is concluded by a discussion about the future of the art therapy profession in Slovakia and the task of finding possibilities through the author ́s personal engagement.Keywords: Art therapy, Training, Slovakia, Political change, Professional recognition.

This paper investigates the relationship between Sicilian mafia and politics by focusing on municipality-level results of national political elections. It exploits the fact that in the early 1990s the Italian party system collapsed, new parties emerged and mafia families had to look for new political allies. It presents evidence, based on disaggregated data from the Italian region of Sicily, that between 1994 and 2013 Silvio Berlusconi's party, Forza Italia, obtained higher vote shares at national elections in municipalities plagued by mafia. The result is robust to the use of different measures of mafia presence, both contemporary and historical, to the inclusion of different sets of controls and to spatial analysis. Instrumenting mafia's presence by determinants of its early diffusion in the late XIX century suggests that the correlation reflects a causal link.

In this article I assess the limits and potential of South Korea's democracy as revealed by a review of political developments related to the Cheonan incident. I argue that the incident's aftermath shows that South Korea's democratic principles and procedures remain vulnerable to pressures generated by national security concerns, although this vulnerability was covered to a limited degree by an open public sphere and active civil society. Korea's political functioning in terms of republican principles and procedural democracy was seriously tested as imperatives of national security created the "state of exception." But civil society appropriated new technologies as well as old tactics to generate "public spheres" of deliberation. I suggest that Korean democracy during the Cheonan crisis reflects the resiliency and vulnerability of the "division system" in which South Korea's politics is embedded. (Asian Perspect/GIGA)

The paper questions the mechanisms of rhetorical action the International Relations scholars use to explain the normative orientation of foreign policy. This paper is based on a survey on how Ministry of Foreign Affairs' officials and civil servants handle the file on cluster munitions at the launch of the Oslo process in February 2007. It shows how the rhetorical trap works by converting a few actors within the political and administrative system, who find in the trap itself the way to thwart it. Through an analysis of the decision-making process, focusing on administrations' work and the institutional logic behind the political use of humanitarian arguments, this article reveals how the human rights reference plays as well as a constraint than as a legitimate resource for institutions. Adapted from the source document.

During the past 27 years, China's economy and relationship with the outside world has been transformed. The magnitude of annual economic growth and rapid increase in the volume of output of goods and services raise unsettling questions about potential threats to the sustainability of current growth levels and implications for economic and political stability. This paper examines the sources of economic growth and concludes the strong state system, high rates of saving and investment and demographic structure will sustain growth. Chinese authorities must be aware that a failure to maintain the process of financial and political institutional reform or to address the widening regional income inequalities poses potential domestic threats to sustainable growth. Tensions remain in China's international relationships, forcing China to consider further adjustment and accommodation in its regional security and economic relationships.

During the past 27 years, China's economy and relationship with the outside world has been transformed. The magnitude of annual economic growth and rapid increase in the volume of output of goods and services raise unsettling questions about potential threats to the sustainability of current growth levels and implications for economic and political stability. This paper examines the sources of economic growth and concludes the strong state system, high rates of saving and investment and demographic structure will sustain growth. Chinese authorities must be aware that a failure to maintain the process of financial and political institutional reform or to address the widening regional income inequalities poses potential domestic threats to sustainable growth. Tensions remain in China's international relationships, forcing China to consider further adjustment and accommodation in its regional security and economic relationships.

A fierce national East Prussia-related conflict between Germans and Poles after the First WorldWar basically contrasted with the prewar situation in the province. After the decision taken atthe Paris Peace Conference in 1919 to hold a plebiscite in two governmental districts of thisGerman province on their inhabitants' political affiliations, the vast population there had totake a test on the basic choice of their political, and simultaneously cultural, orientation. Today,researchers agree that the plebiscite of 1920 caused irreversible damage to the multiethnicarea. There is no doubt that the so-called Ostdeutscher Heimatdienst organisation stronglycontributed to this. The article raises questions as to what circumstances promoted the establishmentof the organisation, who its principal actors were, and how they affected the EastPrussian population.Key words: East Prussia, the Versailles system, German-Polish relations, propaganda,Ostdeutscher Heimatdienst. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.15181/ahuk.v30i0.1181