Suchergebnisse

Authoritarian populists offer a vision of state. This ideologically fixed imaginary provides an electoral-authoritarian template for how to shape states once in power. Yet not all those called populists are populist. Some are elitist plebeians. They construct themselves as 'the moral elite' above which fights for 'the people' below against 'the corrupt'. I argue that elitist plebeianism contains a distinct vision of government as elected guardianship. Like populists, elitist plebeians advocate extending executive power. Yet they envisage this not as the realization of the people's will, but as the projection of accountability downwards. To them, divisions of power are acceptable as divisions of guardian labour. Rival opinions are not illegitimate, just irrelevant, but opposition is intolerable. Therefore, studies of populist authoritarianism should be revisited. Elitist plebeian visions of state may have been misread as authoritarian populist ones. I examine President Magufuli (Tanzania) as an exemplar and identify other potential elitist plebeians worldwide.

The EEA EFTA States are the only non-EU States that have been allowed, on a regular basis, to participate in the work of EU agencies governing the internal market. Participation in the work of an agency does not include the right to vote, nor are third States automatically bound by decisions enacted by the agency. Participation "in the work" of an EU agency is a way of providing decision-shaping rights in exchange to third countries that are willing to enter into mechanisms that grant the binding effect of agency decisions in their territories. As these mechanisms are intertwined with the attribution of decision-shaping rights, the arrangements for participation in the work of an EU agency become highly complex. The paper identifies and examines four different models for participation. It argues that the direct participation of third countries in EU agencies, with voting rights, would be favourable compared to the current approach.

The study offers solutions to the crucial European Union´s crisis issue of how to overcome the present deadlock of the Treaty establishing a Constitution for Europe,giving priority to a short, concise Treaty merging the existing Founding Treaties on European Union and European Community along the traditional line of the dynamic, gradual evolvement of the European integration and cooperation. The author uses the method of applying the lesson taken from the process of dynamically gradual stages in European integration history to current challenges and to the prospects of further reforming the enlarged European Union. The author describes the dynamic stages showing that the Monnet integration method had its successes in European integration,but also experienced its limits, facing a dilemma of how to continue the successful integration process without giving a clear final design of the European Union. The more the EU enlarged with now twentyseven members, the more the doubts about the Union´s identity,namely its decisiveness, increased ,and thus the Union´s need of legitimacy increased requiring broad democratic approval by the European citizens. Establishing a constitution can be taken as political signal giving an European identity building political impulse. But establishing a Constitution can also be taken as an act of political intervention, it can be misunderstood, in the view of the citizens, as a final design of the European Union. The author is giving no priority to any political intervention by establishing a new Treaty text labelled "Constitution" and, by doing so,would again further damage the European Union´s legitimacy and risk misunderstandings to invest a new order, a static order similar to the static nature of nation state´s Constitution. Whatever label a new Treaty text will actually turn out, the enlarged European Union´s identity and legitimacy is the crucial issue: how to further develop the Union´s constitutional essentials – democracy, transparency and decisiveness- , essentials to be incorporated in a new Treaty text. The study´s method of applying the lesson taken from European integration history is exemplified in chapter IX also, applying the findings to the issue of the Union´s decisiveness, to the Union´s role played in the field of the Common Foreign and Security Policy focussing on the Union´s experience made in the years 2001-2003 after the September 11 attacks and on the current crucial issue of international security and cooperation politics of how to overcome the deadlock in Iraq and the serious prospect of another deadlock in Afghanistan.

The article is an overview of the two-day sessions of the IX International Scientific Seminar "The Development of the Word-Formation and Lexical System of the Russian language", which was held at Saratov State University on October 30–31, 2023. The seminar was attended by derivatologists from Saratov, Moscow, Volgograd, Nizhny Novgorod, Kazan, Donetsk, Samara, Tambov, as well as from Kazakhstan. The seminar has existed on the basis of the SSU since 2008, and it is superintended by O. Yu. Kryuchkova and O. I. Dmitrieva. The main topic of the seminar is related to studying the dynamics of word-formation and lexical processes of the Russian language. According to the established tradition, the greater part of the speeches addressed the problems of word-formation derivation of parts of speech in synchronic, diachronic and cognitive aspects: the dynamics of the formation of various word-formation models and word-formation categories in diachrony, issues of syntactic derivation. A specific area of the participants' research interests included neologizing derivation processes and processes of modern abbreviation; the following processes were identified: the trends of neologizing and the main types of word-formation neologisms of modern times, the dynamics of the new vocabulary penetrating into the language and the peculiarities of its functioning in media texts, methods of formation and mechanisms of perceiving abbreviations. A number of reports presented the results of studying the semantic and functional features of lexical subsystems on the synchronic levels of the language. Dynamic lexical and semantic processes are reflected in the description of modern metaphorical models, semantics and functions of verb words of individual modes of action, and language variants. The seminar once again confirmed the status of a scientific platform uniting scientists whose scientific interests are related to the development of word-formation and lexico-semantic processes and subsystems of the Russian language. A collective monograph is being prepared based on the materials of the seminar.

O'Brien, Kevin J. ; Han, Rongbin: Path to democracy? Assessing village elections in China. - S. 359 - 378 Manion, Melanie: How to assess village elections in China. - S. 379 - 383 Schubert, Gunter: Studying 'Democratic' governance in contemporary China : looking at the village is not enough. - S. 385 - 390 Kennedy, John James: Legitimacy with Chinese characteristics : 'two increases, one reduction' . - S. 391 - 395 Alpermann, Björn: Institutionalizing village governance in China. - S. 397 -409 Tan, Qingshan: Building democratic infrastructure: village electoral institutions. - S. 411 - 420