Suchergebnisse

While party primaries for candidate selection gain gradual popularity in established European democracies, they remain rare in Eastern Europe. This article focuses on the Romanian Social Democrats and investigates the reasons why primaries were abandoned after one use. The central argument is that this short lifespan was determined by the absence of relevant short-term benefits. A few pathologies of the primaries led to their failure: contest administration, primary regulations and high costs. The key findings are that party primaries did not produce the intended consequences when implementation was accompanied by centralised decision-making.

The topic of loneliness among older migrants has recently gained scholarly interest. There is a particular focus on why older migrants are generally lonelier than their non-migrant peers from the destination. These studies neglect variations both within and between older migrant groups. Our qualitative study is innovative for three reasons. First, it focuses on Romanian migrants aged 65+ who fled communism and aged in place in Switzerland—an understudied population of former political refugees that experiences little or no loneliness in later years. Second, it takes a life-course approach to explore experiences of loneliness during communist Romania, in the context of migration and later in life. Third, it focuses on protective and coping factors rather than risk factors. Having been through hard times in communist Romania—marked by fear and distrust among people and estrangement from society—older Romanian migrants built strength to withstand difficult times, learned to embrace solitude, and/or to relativise current hardships, if any. Upon arrival many founded or joined an association or church, which offers the opportunity to establish a sustainable social network consisting of a large pool of Romanian non-kin with a shared past and experience of migration and integration, to counteract social losses in later life. When moments of loneliness cannot be prevented (e.g. due to death of a spouse), they try to be active to distract from loneliness or 'simply' accept the situation. These aspects need to be taken into account in future research and when developing loneliness interventions.

The topic of loneliness among older migrants has recently gained scholarly interest. There is a particular focus on why older migrants are generally lonelier than their non-migrant peers from the destination. These studies neglect variations both within and between older migrant groups. Our qualitative study is innovative for three reasons. First, it focuses on Romanian migrants aged 65+ who fled communism and aged in place in Switzerland—an understudied population of former political refugees that experiences little or no loneliness in later years. Second, it takes a life-course approach to explore experiences of loneliness during communist Romania, in the context of migration and later in life. Third, it focuses on protective and coping factors rather than risk factors. Having been through hard times in communist Romania—marked by fear and distrust among people and estrangement from society—older Romanian migrants built strength to withstand difficult times, learned to embrace solitude, and/or to relativise current hardships, if any. Upon arrival many founded or joined an association or church, which offers the opportunity to establish a sustainable social network consisting of a large pool of Romanian non-kin with a shared past and experience of migration and integration, to counteract social losses in later life. When moments of loneli- ness cannot be prevented (e.g. due to death of a spouse), they try to be active to distract from loneliness or 'simply' accept the situation. These aspects need to be taken into account in future research and when developing loneliness interventions.

Recent literature reviews have attempted to link goal-setting processes with other traditional human relations topics, possibly in a search for explanations of the inconsistent results among some empirical studies. The present reformulation builds upon the models developed in these literature reviews by offering more specific propositions regarding the variables in these models and by integrating these variables with three other organizational themes: participative management, job design and role theory. The model offered here is a meta-model because it is an integration of variables and concepts from several other models. Eleven propositions regarding the direct effects of goal characteristics, feedback, and role characteristics and eleven corollaries regarding the moderating effects of personal and job characteristics are presented.

<p>This quantitative study examines the correlations between humor, loneliness, gender and aging by presenting the results from a sample of eighty-three older Romanian adults, aged sixty and above. The first section of the paper is a comprehensive review of the social-psychological literature on aging, gender and humor. The second section assesses the findings generated from a study that uses the Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale (Thorson &amp; Powell, 1993) and the Social and Emotional Loneliness Scale for Adults – short version, (diTomaso, Brannen &amp; Best, 2004). Building on Robert Weiss's (1973) reflections on the differences between feelings of loneliness because of social isolation or emotional isolation, the research findings nuance –and in some cases challenge several assumptions on gender, age, and emotional and social loneliness. The findings also point to the correlation between feelings of social loneliness and the use of humor in interpersonal communications. The data collected suggests that while Romanian men may value the use of humor more than women when self-reporting, that older Romanian women tend to use humor in interpersonal situations and that there is a significant correlation between the use of this type of humor and a reduced sense of social loneliness.</p>

AbstractIn the late 1920s and throughout the 1930s, several sociological monographic campaigns were carried out in a few villages in Romania. It was for the first time that a large research group from Romania investigated rural social life using an integrated theoretical system and interdisciplinary methods and instruments. In the second half of the 1930s, a different kind of rural-oriented endeavour started to be undertaken: the "royal voluntary student teams", whose work in Romanian villages was more oriented towards social action than social research. In October 1938, the Law of the Social Service was issued, providing that all of Romania's university graduates were compelled to participate in organized cultural work in villages. In most of the activities undertaken by the Bucharest Sociological School and coordinated by Professor Dimitrie Gusti, women participated in large numbers – yet another new feature in Romanian scientific practice. In this paper, I explore how gender, conceptualized as a social, political, and material category, configures power relations within a research group, and I provide tentative and inherently partial answers to such questions as: What combination of social, economic, and political factors led to women's massive involvement in the sociological monographic campaigns? How did women's participation contribute to the research endeavours? What are the disciplinary and institutional mechanisms and personal strategies that produced women's inclusion in, and later exclusion from, the research group?

The financial crisis of 2007 has caused a number of global changes. As was normal, financial institutions, and within those the credit institutions are getting special supervision and regulation. Especially at the level of the European Union, the regulation and supervision of the banking sector reached some limits not previously seen. The present work deals with the causes and the effects regarding the regulation of the Romanian banking system. As well it has been enumerated the main legislative acts that have a significant impact on the Romanian banking activity. We came to the conclusion that we are witnessing an overregulation, whose impact is insufficiently analyzed and that has multiple effects on the economy in a negative way. We are witnessing as well an attack on the market economy, which is still in an emerging phase in Romania. We also find that there is a tendency to offer social protection to certain categories of bank customers, without the banks having this role.

Since the beginning of 1975, researchers have grown their interest in public service motivation and, despite the
increased number of publications until our days, no research has been developed on PSM in the Romanian' public
administration system. The present study analyses the motivation system in the Romanian public administration and the
prime goal was to find out the main problems and aspects that must be improved in order to increase both the extrinsic
and intrinsic motivation among Romanian' civil servants. The research is based on a qualitative approach, being an
exploratory study conducted using two research methods: the analysis of the official documents and the opinion survey
based on an interview, in order to design a series of proposals for improving civil servants' current level of motivation. The
results show a difference in the respondents' answers regarding the system of motivation for civil servants. The participants
in the interview were respondents from the central and local public administration.