Suchergebnisse

Since the foundation of the People's Republic of China (PRC), the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has sought to control every aspect of religion in Chinese society. Recently, the CCP has increasingly leveraged religious institutions to disseminate a positive narrative of its religious policies in an effort to preserve or enhance its relations with countries that identify with those religions. This has enabled Beijing to avoid criticism and even increase international support despite widely reported violations of religious freedom in China. This article expands the concept of religious diplomacy to explain the PRC's dynamic use of soft power, censorship and coercion in its international relations. Drawing on the examples of Buddhism, Christianity and Islam, this paper explores the CCP's efforts to mobilize its religious institutions in order to (a) promote China's unique religious culture, (b) strengthen domestic control through foreign relations and (c) preserve foreign relations by controlling international perceptions.

The term populism has recently gained visibility in the media and policy world to describe the foreign policy principles, rhetoric and strategies of political actors in the United States and some European states. Yet, populism is nothing new in Latin America where it has enjoyed a long tradition among leaders of various countries. Populism has thus far largely been treated as a national phenomenon with few international manifestations. Thus, this article adopts the concept of populism and its core components such as anti-elitism, the people, and the general will within a role theory framework to trace the foreign policy roles that populist governments play as a first step to improving our knowledge on the nexus of populism and foreign policy. We examine this framework in the context of the foreign policy of Carlos Menem of Argentina and Hugo Chávez of Venezuela.

Background: Information and communication technologies (ICTs) gained prevalent organizational and structural value in the modern economy. E-commerce is one of the sectors directly influenced by technological change. However, not all countries have the same opportunities to develop e-commerce growth; there are significant discrepancies in ICT utilization worldwide, known as the digital divide. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to explore the level of difference among European countries regarding the e-commerce functionalities in their enterprises using a cluster analysis. Methods/Approach: To accomplish the paper goal, the k-means cluster analysis was conducted on the Eurostat data from 2019. Enterprises from 28 European countries were taken into consideration. The Kruskal-Wallis test is used to explore if the differences among clusters regarding the digital development, measured by the Digital Economy and Society Index are significant. Results: The investigation confirmed that there are significant differences among European countries regarding the development of e-commerce. However, a similar level of e-commerce is not related to economic and digital development. Conclusions: Since the relationship between economic development and e-commerce development in European countries is not linear, country-level policies are likely to be significant factors driving e-commerce development, which leads to the need for further investigation of this issue.

Background: Information and communication technologies (ICTs) gained prevalent organizational and structural value in the modern economy. E-commerce is one of the sectors directly influenced by technological change. However, not all countries have the same opportunities to develop e-commerce growth; there are significant discrepancies in ICT utilization worldwide, known as the digital divide. Objectives: The purpose of this paper is to explore the level of difference among European countries regarding the e-commerce functionalities in their enterprises using a cluster analysis. Methods/Approach: To accomplish the paper goal, the k-means cluster analysis was conducted on the Eurostat data from 2019. Enterprises from 28 European countries were taken into consideration. The Kruskal-Wallis test is used to explore if the differences among clusters regarding the digital development, measured by the Digital Economy and Society Index are significant. Results: The investigation confirmed that there are significant differences among European countries regarding the development of e-commerce. However, a similar level of e-commerce is not related to economic and digital development. Conclusions: Since the relationship between economic development and e-commerce development in European countries is not linear, country-level policies are likely to be significant factors driving e-commerce development, which leads to the need for further investigation of this issue.

Justice is a contested concept. A more graspable version of it, it is argued in this paper, is an understanding of it in the context of what is deemed as 'injustice' rather than justice. As such, the paper takes a markedly different approach than the perspectives which have emerged so far. A main theme of this paper is the disjunction between, on the one hand, strong reactions to injustice, and a desire for some affective dimension to the EU, some normative adhesive that might bind the EU as an ethical entity; and on the other, the very great difficulty in identifying an enforceable concept of justice in an EU that continues to be driven by a market mentality. There will always remain a gap between the aspiration for justice and its achievement. While the notion of an EU that does not aspire to justice is unthinkable, and EU law must at least hold out a prospect of justice, the gap between aspiration and achievement remains huge. However, this paper also argues that it is the very sui generis, supranational status of the EU that creates particular obstacles to the realisation of a shared sense of justice. Due to this structural limitation, it is argued that any agreed concept of justice will remain minimalist. However, human rights remain a powerful symbolic and actual force for justice and a better focus for its achievement, whether we understand them as a singular articulation of justice, or as free-standing moral concepts in their own right. It is also crucial to retain a strong sense of injustice and to assess every element of EU law on that basis. This discussion paper is part of a series of contributions to the conference "Towards a Grammar of Justice in EU Law', which took place on 6-7 November 2014 at VU University Amsterdam, sponsored by ACCESS EUROPE Amsterdam, VU Centre for European Legal Studies and the Dutch Research Council VENI grant.

The withdrawal of the United Kingdom from the European Union has the potential to fundamentally change the EU and European integration. On the one hand, a withdrawal could tip the EU towards protectionism, exacerbate existing division, or unleash centrifugal forces leading to the EU's unravelling. Alternatively, the EU could free itself of its most awkward member, making the EU easier to lead and more effective. Despite these potentially significant consequences, analysis of the implications for the EU remains quite limited. Most analysis of a UK withdrawal has instead focused on the implications for the UK, or the implications for the EU of a renegotiated UK membership. The threat of a withdrawal also underpins Prime Minister David Cameron's hopes to one day secure a renegotiation of Britain's relationship within the EU. If a UK renegotiation would profoundly change the EU, then a British withdrawal would also affect it in a big way.

As this paper sets out, a British withdrawal would require the EU to face three sets of interrelated challenges. First, there will be the short-term challenge of negotiating and managing a UK withdrawal. Second, as part of the withdrawal negotiations the EU will need to reach agreement with the UK over a post-withdrawal relationship. The EU will then have to live with that relationship. Finally, the EU will need to manage a series of changes to itself, such as shifts in the balance of power within the EU, change brought to its relations with the other non-EU parts of Europe, and the implications for the EU's security and place in the world. The paper aims to begin discussion of these issues, setting out a series of questions the EU needs to ask itself about a British withdrawal.(Autorenreferat)