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In his 1790 address to the Académie Française in Paris, Condorcet noted that every new generation has a tendency to accuse itself of being less civic-minded than previous cohorts. Two centuries later, this argument has once again regained front-page status. The debate is currently focused on the question of whether or not social capital and civic engagement are declining in Western societies. In his academic best-seller Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam argues that younger age cohorts, socialized in the prosperous economic conditions of the 1960s and onwards, are less inclined to engage in community life and in politics, and also less likely to trust their fellow citizens. By contrast, the 'long civic generation', born roughly between 1910 and 1940, is portrayed as much more motivated in these respects. They readily volunteer in community projects, read newspapers and take on more social responsibilities. In this view, a process of generational replacement is responsible for a steady decline of social capital and civic engagement in American society. As the long civic generation is replaced by younger age cohorts, the social capital stock of American communities slowly diminishes. The indicators used to substantiate this claim are numerous and diverse: measures for voter turnout, attendance of club meetings, generalized trust, the number of common family dinners, the number of card games played together, and even respect for traffic rules. All of these attitudes and behaviours, it is argued, depict a significant downward trend.Although Putnam is by far the most vocal of all scholars in the 'decline of social capital' choir, he certainly is not the only author describing an erosion of traditional societal relations.

This piece reflects on what we might mean by spacing and timing in a number of ways. It considers first how we might see the Palermo conference that launched this journal issue as a kairos, a temporal moment of crystallization that worked through the coming together of its participants to signal that a new intellectual path was already being and continues to be cleared. It then reflects on how these terms work, for the author, to make a new sense of his long-term attempt with Richard Macve to understand where management comes from and what management is. It suggests that management emerges when humans succeed in engineering the spacing and timing of activity into a new kind of centripetal amalgam. At the structuring level this entails the design of a centripetal kind of structure, where vertical and horizontal nodal connections are engineered to cohere rather than collapse—something that is arguably first achieved with the articulation of the line-and-staff structure. But such a structuring is nothing without a set of processes ensuring and enacting the continuity of spacing-timing coherence within and between nodes, all day every day, and here and every relevant where. Such processing, it is suggested, takes place once writing and examining practices get combined with putting numbers on people. Finally the paper asks whether spacing and timing may not have a conceptual or theoretical status analogous to that of Heidegger's 'lighting of the world', as horizonal constructs marking out the ground and limit of our acting and making sense in the world at all.

Recent research has demonstrated that there has been little improvement in quality of media coverage of women in Lithuania. Women's images are usually sexualized, stereotyped or simply negative. In the media portrayals, women are often confined to the private sphere of home.
The article focuses on media representations of women in the context of women-and-media policies in EU and Lithuania. Analyzing the EU, UN and Lithuanian communication policy documents and describing briefly the key media and gender issues in EU and Lithuania, it demonstrates the lack of gender-equal media policy and the sluggishness with which the existing media policy with regard to gender issues is enforced in Lithuania.
Addressing the pluralism of women's roles and images in the media, and fair and sufficient media coverage of women, the article also discusses feminist and post-feminist media studies that could offer more complex and sophisticated media research strategies.
The article also proposes some recommendations that could change, to some degree, the existing media and gender situation for the better. The author suggests that policy recommendations need a strong network of public, official and private institutions in order to be implemented successfully.
Placing considerable importance on eliminating stereotypes of women and on promoting diverse and nonstereotyped images of women in the media, the article uses the term "conflicted hegemony". "Conflicted hegemony" implies that the media provide a site for conflicts and debates over different interpretations of the dominant culture, and that ideological counter-tendencies always appear in the dominant ideological forms. Policy recommendations, media research techniques and alternative media interpretations by their consumers can serve as resistance strategies to this hegemony.

Business process change involving information technology has become notorious for high failure rates. Apparently, the larger the project scope and size, the higher the failure rate. Also, as a major factor among others associated with failure, past research has identified an overemphasis on technical validity and functionality at the expense of the social and institutional process side in change projects. Yet, even if important factors had been correctly and completely identified, the social process, within which they interact, might have remained obscured. Furthermore, long-term, large-scale change projects, particularly when they encompass IT components as major building blocks, defy the conventional start-to-closeout, detailed project planning. Rather, they unfold in a stepwise fashion with alternative paths towards a coarse goal, particularly in environments with distributed powers, as in the public sector. For this process and this environment, the author proposes that participatory action research (PAR) has the capacity to provide a holistic methodological and social-process frame and a mode of joint inquiry. This article gives an account of the approach based on a large government change project in its early stages. In this project, practitioners and researchers formed a joint team, which strove to lay foundations to a multi-year, IT-enabled change initiative meant to become a state-wide exemplar for similar projects. During this early project stage, salient stakeholders and their needs were identified, which helped launch a highly inclusive process. However, as found in this project, external influences impacted this public-sector project in a way that the build-up of consensus remained incomplete, underscoring the need for ongoing stakeholder involvement within the project.

The article tries to identify the factors that led to urban growth in India in the period we style 'early medieval India', viz the centuries between the decline of the Gupta empire and the rise of the Islamic sultanates in northern India. In doing so, the author obviously responds to the seminal work of R.S. Sharma, without, however, even mentioning it. Sharma is one of the most influential advocates of the school of 'Indian feudalism', and he linked the decline of cities in India during the period under review to the decline of long-distance trade (caused especially by the decline of Roman trade with India) on the one hand and the feudal transformation of agrarian relations on the other. The economic crisis (the emphasis on which easily identifies Sharma as a staunch Marxist) went along with a socio-religious crisis, during which people expected the fourth age of Hinduism, the age of Kali, to draw to a close. Thakur does not deny the importance of economic factors completely, but tries to weigh them against other factors, which he styles 'technological and ecological' and 'institutional and political'. His conclusion in this respect is somewhat inconclusive as 'no single factor initiated urban growth', though in a surprising move, he adds that three phases can be made out which are characterized by agrarian expansion (AD 600–750), emergence of empires (750–1000 – this phase is obviously related to the institutional and political factors) and finally the predominance of trade (1000–1200). In what sense this development is based on 'mechanisms' (as alluded to in the title), remains completely open.

RESUMEN: Existe la concepción generalizada entre investigadores y autoridades educativas, que la calidad de la educación se reñeja tínicamente en el desempeño de los estudiantes en exámenes estandarizados. En este artículo, por el contrario, se parte de la base que la escuela es con frecuencia la única presencia que hace el Estado en ciertas comunidades del país, especialmente en zonas rurales o marginales, por lo que la calidad educativa debería ser medida en términos déla contribución déla escuela al desarrollo económico y social sostenible de las comunidades donde se inserta. Este documento tiene como fin reñexionar acerca de cómo se puede construir capital social, capital humano y una educación de calidad haciendo uso de los recursos y de las oportunidades que ofrece la escuela y el liderazgo efectivo. ; ABSTRACT: There is a widespread conception among researchers and educational authorities that the quality of education depends solely on the students 'performance in standardized tests. This article, on the contrary, stems from the fact that schools are increasingly the only State presence in rural o poor communities and, hence, educational quality should be determined by the nature and extent of the school's contribution to the sustainable social and economic development of those communities. This paper is aimed at giving some suggestions on how schools can build social and human capital by using their resources under an effective leadership. With this article, the author provides theoretical and practical insights that can he used by school leaders, policy actors, parents, educators, students, and political authorities interested in improving the quality of educational processes.

Since the demise of central planning, post-Soviet cities have found themselves operating in a radically different economic climate. Contrary to the situation during the Soviet époque, market relations and the urban economy's adjustment thereto constitute the reality which urbanites face in their daily lives. For the vast majority, this reality has been harsh. Even so, market agency in post-Soviet cities is circumscribed by a physical infrastructure composed to foster its rejection, leading to an inevitable tension between Soviet legacy and the reality of the market economy. An overarching task of this dissertation is to contribute to a greater understanding of the new urban form which is emerging out of this tension. For this purpose, eight papers, using case studies from urban Kazakhstan, are brought together in order to shed light on recent urban developments in the former Soviet Union.Two broad themes are subject to particular attention: urbanisation and regional migration processes, and urban socio-spatial differentiation. Urbanisation is studied through the comparative analysis of census data from 1989 and 1999, from which a "closed city effect" pattern emerges. Sovietand post-Soviet era urban-bounf migrant characteristics are compared using survey data (N=3,136) collected by the author, demonstrating the existence of a significant ethnic transition within the migrant flow. Socio-spatial differentiation patterns are mapped and analysed for three Kazakh military-industrial case study cities (Ust'-Kamenogorsk, Leninogorsk and Zyryanovsk), revealing significant spatial disparities which are principally explainable in light of the workings of the Soviet economy, and its built-in priority system. Market forces tend to accentuate them.

In der Arbeit wird ein Konzept zur Messung der Effizienz regionaler Arbeitsmarktpolitik vorgestellt. Ausgangspunkt ist der Schweizer Ansatz einer anreizkompatiblen Arbeitsvermittlung, in dem die strategischen Ziele der Arbeitsmarktpolitik auf nationaler Ebene vorgegeben werden und die operative Durchführung in der Eigenverantwortung der Kantone und der Regionalen Arbeitsvermittlungen (RAV) liegt. Theoretisch basiert der Ansatz auf dem Konzept des 'Yardstick-Competition'. Die Effektivität der Leistungserbringung der Agenten wird anhand definierter Ziele und exogener Rahmenbedingungen in Form von Wirkungsindikatoren verglichen und an ein Vergütungssystem gekoppelt. Anhand einer Beispielrechnung mit bundesdeutschen Daten werden Möglichkeiten und Restriktionen des Modellansatzes diskutiert. Es wird deutlich, dass ein solches Modell sehr hohe Anforderungen sowohl an die Datenqualität als auch an die inhaltliche Umsetzung wie beispielsweise die Definition der Wirkungsziele und deren Operationalisierung stellt, die derzeit noch nicht gegeben sind. Dennoch kann der Ansatz im Kontext einer modernen Verwaltung als ein Instrument zu mehr Transparenz und Effektivität in der Arbeitsvermittlung gesehen werden. ; This paper presents a concept for measuring the efficiency of regional labour market policy taking as a starting point the Swiss approach of incentive-compatible employment services. This approach sets strategic targets of labour market policy at a national level while leaving responsibilities for implementation to the cantons and regional employment services (RAV). Theoretically, the model is based on the concept of 'yardstick competition'. The efficiency of agents' performance is compared by means of defined targets and under consideration of exogenous factors through efficiency indicators and coupled to a benefit system. The author discusses possibilities and restrictions of this approach using a calculation example based on data from Germany. The calculation shows that it is not yet possible to meet the model's high demands with respect to data quality as well as to implementation, regarding for example the definition of efficiency targets and their operationalization. Nevertheless, in the context of modern administration, the approach can be considered a valid tool towards making employment services more transparent and effective.

International audience ; The international critique in the Intellectual Property domain is growing: rights are too strong, too exclusive (overpropertization), too difficult to manage in the digital world. Within the European Union, the French transposition draft of the 2001 Copyright Directive does not seem to bring a common and shared solution, notably on the implementation of the concept of "cultural diversity". New solutions must be analyzed from the point of view of various actors on the web. Debates on author rights and on-line cultural practices oppose two economic approaches: one is based on sharing, the other on the market. Cannot these two approaches be reconciliated by solutions such as Creative Commons? We will see some of the main points of this debate. ; Une critique internationale de plus en plus forte se développe autour des droits de propriété intellectuelle : ils sont trop exclusifs (phénomène d' overpropertization) , trop nombreux, trop lourds à gérer dans l'univers numérique. Le projet de transposition en droit français de la Directive européenne sur le droit d'auteur de 2001 ne semble pas apporter une solution commune et acceptée, notamment sur la mise en oeuvre du concept de diversité culturelle. Il faut donc analyser les diverses solutions qui émergent des acteurs du réseau. Les débats sur le droit d'auteur et les pratiques culturelles en ligne opposent deux approches économiques: l'une est fondée sur le partage, l'autre sur l'appropriation marchande. Mais ces deux approches ne peuvent-elles être rendues compatibles à travers les solutions de Creative Commons ? Nous revoyons ici quelques points du débat en cours.

The word "domestication" is used today with different meanings. The author tries to synthetize the classical zoological signification, which considers as domesticated a limited list of species, because of very restrictive choice criteria. It keeps its logic, but is now often criticized and replaced by broader conceptions, where any breeding action of man on animals, even tenuous, is considered as a domestication one, and where the list of domesticated species is considerably increased. In French legislation, an intermediate position is to be found: the existence of domesticated breeds or varieties is recognized in some wild species which are bred by man. Some authors think that it would be suitable now to suppress the word domestication but it does not seem easy to find substitutes. ; Le mot domestication n'a plus, aujourd'hui, de signification univoque et il est utilisé selon différentes acceptions. La conception zoologique classique, qui fut la référence, est présentée de façon très synthétique. Elle retient une liste limitée d'espèces domestiques, en raison de critères de définition très restrictifs. Elle conserve sa logique, mais elle est souvent critiquée de nos jours et volontiers remplacée par des conceptions élargies, où toute action de l'Homme se traduisant par une activité d'élevage, même ténue, procède de la domestication, et où la liste des espèces considérées comme domestiques se trouve considérablement augmentée. Le législateur tient une position intermédiaire, en admettant qu'il existe des races ou variétés domestiques dans des espèces sauvages soumises à élevage. Certains auteurs pensent qu'il conviendrait aujourd'hui de supprimer le mot domestication, mais reconnaissent ne pas savoir par quoi le remplacer.

Although a most active protagonist in the first round of the 2004 French local elections, UDF saw its influence steadily fade. Obviously, this political party successfully came out of the elections, but only because its status on the French political scene underwent changes over the last few years : it moved from the status of member of the politically dominant "bipolar quadrille" – particularly in the 1980s – to the one of a minor party engaged in the competition for command facing the difficulties related to a centrist strategy. This article draws on the actual status of the UDF to analyse the more global French partisan system. The author emphasises the characteristics of French political competition, fundamentally multipartite, in spite of the effective predominance of two main parties. ; Représentant l'un des animateurs les plus actifs de la campagne du premier tour des élections locales 2004 en France, l'UDF a vu progressivement son rôle s'effacer lors de ces élections. Si celles-ci doivent néanmoins être considérées comme un succès pour l'UDF, c'est que le statut de ce parti sur la scène politique française a profondément changé en l'espace de quelques années. De membre de la « quadrille bipolaire » dominant la vie politique, notamment au cours des années 1980, l'UDF est devenu un petit parti qui ne lutte plus qu'indirectement dans la compétition pour le pouvoir et qui rencontre des difficultés liées à l'adoption d'une stratégie centriste. En examinant la situation de l'UDF, cet article propose également une analyse plus globale du système partisan français. Le caractère fondamentalement multipartite de la compétition politique en France est ainsi souligné, malgré la domination effective des deux principaux partis.

Defence date: 25 October 2004 ; Examining board: Prof. Neil Walker, EUI (co-supervisor) ; Prof. Jean-Victor Louis, ULB, Brussels/EUI (supervisor) ; Dr Christos Hadjiemmanuil, LSE London ; Dr Chiara Zilioli, Deputy General Counsel, Head of Institutional Law Division, DG-Legal Service of the ECB, Frankfurt ; First made available online on 24 September 2013. ; This dissertation provides a doctrinal and "applied" overview of the main developments in the post-Maastricht transfer of monetary sovereignty from the member states to supranational institutions. In so doing, it concentrates on three areas of particular interest, complexity and tension between different forces. One area is simply the configuration of supranational institutions involved and their relationship, and in particular the tensions among the independent ECB, the national dimension of the broader ESCB and the state-dominated Ecofin Council. A second area concerns the well-known tension between monetary and broader economic union – and in particular the asymmetry between the significantly centralized monetary institutions and the retention of fiscal authority at national level. A third area concerns the internal and external dimension of monetary authority (exchange rates) from broader macro-economic consideration, and, reflecting this, the continuing absence of a definitive legal and institutional resolution of the extent of external monetary sovereignty transferred to central EU institutions. Here there emerges an analysis of the framework of good governance for the new multilayered system of monetary union. The key question addressed by the author of this study is whether the shift in monetary authority does or should involve a reconceptualization of the question of where sovereignty lies in Europe, both over monetary matters specifically or more generally.

The article distinguishes two ways in which Heidegger can be a subject of research. In one type of research, he is a historical figure of political events, & as such a subject of history as a science. Such research has to satisfy the scientific criteria of historiographical method regardless of how critically it treats its subject. In the second type, the subject are Heidegger's work & the philosophical motives of his political involvement at the start of the Nazi regime in 1933/34. An analysis has in both cases come up with some sloppy scientific procedures & shown that frequently the a priori assumptions get the upper hand, & tend to lean in favour of proving his guilt. A brief introductory overview of the debate is followed by a concise historical outline of the stages in this controversy, & then by an excursus about the essence of the scientific method, & finally by a critical review of the works of some historians which serves the author to demonstrate how it is possible for research to get off the right track when not respecting the criteria & the standards of the scientific method. The second part focuses on the question of the interpretation of the relationship between philosophy & political activism. The thesis (with critical references to some recent ideas by Fried, Kisiel, Thoma) is that the philosophical motives of Heidegger's "leap" into politics should primarily be sought in the methodological dimensions of his work, primarily in those linked to the problems of grounding, & not so much in certain notional concordances of his categories with the Nazi terminology & concepts. 54 References. Adapted from the source document.

Austria has gone through two cycles of university reforms since the 1960s. The first aimed to open the universities to social and labour market demand and to make their structures more democratic and flexible. The second reform cycle dealt with glitches in the overly close relationship between universities and state bureaucracy. Bureaucrats still tightly controlled universities through line-budget funding and other forms of micro-management. This close dependency was abolished and university autonomy greatly strengthened when traditionally weak university leadership was replaced by a strong president and centralized administration, and by the creation of governing boards. The author argues that the second reform cycle was much influenced by Anglo Saxon models of university governance and constituted an almost total break with the traditional structures of Austrian universities. ; L'Autriche a entrepris deux grandes séquences de réforme s universitaires depuis les années 1960. La première faisait accepter aux universités les demande s sociale et économique du marché du travail. La deuxième réforme cherchait à distancer l'université de l'Éta t enseignant, arrangement caractérisé par une ingérence bureaucratique centralisatrice de longue date et minée par des mécanisme s d'approbation détaillée des budgets universitaires. Cette relation de dépendanc e étroite a été abolie et l'autonomi e a été établie grâce au renforcement du leadership universitaire par la nomination de recteurs présidents forts de leurs propres fiefs administratifs, et par l'établissement de conseils d'administration. L'auteur montre à quel point cette dernière réforme s'inspirait principalement de modèles anglo-saxons en matière de gouvernance universitaire, et constituait une rupture quasi-totale avec les structures traditionnelles des universités autrichiennes.

Bhutan's stated intention of keeping the value of happiness central to the development process is a suitable counter to the values and karma that prevail in most development strategies and ideals. Given present day realities of unprecedented, accelerating changes and paradigmatic shifts in economic, political, and social practices, any successful strategy for integration into global development processes must be creative in nature. It must, in other words, consist of an ongoing improvisation that is at once virtuosic and virtuous and that brings both greater resolution and resolve into the development process. In this essay the author wants to contribute to this effort by considering the broad landscape of development and trade concepts and practices and their implications for the trajectory of innovations needed to insure that development processes and greater economic interdependence are, indeed, liberating. The auhtor starts by reflecting on the context of present day patterns of development, raising some issues related to history and scale in assessing the effects of increasing global interdependence. He suggestes that present day patterns and scales of globalization have both generated and been generated by the extremely rapid and practically irreversible commodification of subsistence needs—a commodification that (paraphrasing Ivan Illich) has the effect of institutionalizing entirely new classes of the poor. Beyond a critical threshold and unless redirected—that is, informed by radically different values—present day patterns of interdependence will continue bringing about the conversion of communities that have been faring well into aggregates of individuals in need of welfare. Unchecked, the promise of globally extended, deep community will be broken.