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Abstract. The article deals with the wide range of mechanisms in support of civil society institutions–government interaction in the context of developing and implementing European integration reforms in Ukraine. The
authors identified 6 strategic documents and 20 areas
of reform related to the process of European integration,
as well as the key issues concerning implementation of
the Association Agreement between Ukraine and the
EU. The authors conclude that positive trends are visible in recent decades in the institutional development
of Ukrainian civil society, which has become a driving
force of the country's European integration aspirations.
In this setting, civil society institutions (CSIs) work with
government agencies, engage in informal advocacy,
conduct monitoring policies, perform and publish policy analysis and recommendations, and work with and
lobby international agencies and other actors.

The existing empirical studies examined the impact of different variables, such as common language, economic, cultural and geographical factors, on migration. However, none of the studies deals with the social security systems including their coordination as a relevant explanatory factor. The paper focuses on the social security systems in Europe, their mutual coordination and their influence on international migration. The influence of social systems on economic migration can be twofold: influencing the labour migration, i.e. migrants who move for work, and also influencing the benefit migration, i.e. migrants who move in order to receive social benefits. We present the advanced migration model extended by the factors of social security coordination. The main finding is that the labour migration prevails significantly over the benefit migration. Role of social systems as social magnets was not proved to be statistically significant. Adapted from the source document.

The article is concerned with typology of differentiated author's opinions on the world economy phenomena, as internationalization, integration and globalization. The author examines, from the international political economy point of view, their differences and formulates three phases of internationalization process. The author defines also the relation of these phenomena to the process of integration and regionalization in the world economy and pays attention to frequently discussed topic of global governance as well. The author further examines the possibilities of measuring globalization process intensity on both world wide and national economy levels. The article assigns a set of characteristic features or indicators making possible to define main limits of when a given national economy can be hold as being incorporated and in what rate into the globalization process. This step of identification of globalization intensity rate is very important, as starting point, when a strategy of adaptation to globalization trends is needed to be formulated, evidently, closely with the competitiveness growth and catching-up strategy elaboration. Adapted from the source document.

nternational tobacco smuggling remains an important concern for governments, tobacco manufactur-ers and health experts alike. While often linked to other forms of illegal activities, it also directly impacts govern-ment tax and health policies. Knowledge of factors that contribute to illicit tobacco trade and the existence of smug-gling routes is strongly hampered by the lack of reliable data on bilateral flows of illicit tobacco. Therefore, recon-structing the trafficking routes and estimating the size of cross-border illicit flows are crucial steps for gaining bet-ter understanding of these crimes and enforcing actions aimed at countering them. This study is the first to use grav-ity estimation techniques to decompose aggregate illicit cig-arette inflows for which data are available into their bilat-eral components. Our approach is a simple and effective method that can serve as a complement to other methods of pinpointing international trafficking flows such as empty discarded pack data or network analysis to help in the fight against illicit tobacco flows. Policymakers, customs officials as well as law enforcement can employ the presented meth-ods as an additional tool in the fight against illicit trade. Keywords: bilateral illicit cigarette trade, gravity model, predictive estimation

The regionalization of Slovenia implies that it is about a demanding professional & political project, which is expected to be completed in 2008 by establishing the regions. The beginning of their functioning is planned as from 1 January 2009. In order to provide this process, some constitutional amendments were introduced in 2006 The regional legislation with its associated implementing regulations should implement them. The bills on regions, their financing, regional elections & establishment of regions (these bills are already being discussed in the National Assembly of the Republic of Slovenia) are a touchstone for introduction of regions & for a successful beginning of their functioning. There is a variety of challenges & dilemmas regarding regional competences & the number of regions, own tax resources, regional authority organization & other issues. Very few international standards & good local & regional self-government principles are adhered to in Slovenia. For this reason, some criticism has come from the Council of Europe & the European Union. Although regionalization is an internal matter of the states concerned, the European principles regarding the objectives of regionalization, division & sharing of powers between levels of government, the scope of regional self-government, sharing of tax revenues & public finance, the connection between the regionalization processes & European & world processes, etc. cannot be avoided. References. Adapted from the source document.