Suchergebnisse

The article examines the vps and downs of Hungary's accession to the European Union. It considers Europeanization as a process parallel to EU accession, and uses key terms accordingly. Hungary's development in the 1990s is thus described as "anticipatory Europeanization", the more concrete EU perspective taken up in 1998 as "adaptive Europeanization", the years between 1998 and 2002 are labeled as "derailed Europeanization", and the years after the actual EU accession as "post-accession crisis". Much of this analysis focuses on the central government, but also includes developments on the sub-national, i.e. meso- and micro-levels of Hungarian public administration. The conclusion offers an outlook for the imminent future, as Hungary prepares for assuming the EU presidency in 2011. Adapted from the source document.

Several US military personnel have been accused of committing "atrocities" in Iraq. The dominant assumption is that these were isolated incidents. Further, it is commonly assumed that if these incidents were atrocities, or war crimes, the individuals who perpetrated them, & in some cases their commanders, should be held both legally & morally responsible. Yet the paradigm of individual responsibility does not capture all that is morally meaningful about these incidents. When policies regularly & predictably cause them, even though unintended, atrocity can become systemic. The concept of collective moral responsibility -- at the organization, state, & public levels -- helps us understand how these acts could occur & what they mean. Systemic atrocity & collective moral responsibility are two useful concepts to look for means to prevent atrocities & to respond to them. Adapted from the source document.

AbstractThe not‐for‐profit sector has long played an important role in the policy process through encouraging political engagement, policy research and advocacy, and service delivery. This paper examines two not‐for‐profit organizations, National Children's Alliance and National Alliance on Mental Illness, both of which are grassroots organizations formed to radically change public and professional perceptions of their respective issues and reform the way services are offered to those in need. Borrowing from the literature on policy image and agenda setting, we identify the strategies used by these two highly successful not‐for‐profit groups in their efforts to change the system through redefining problems, reframing issues, and securing legislation with the help of policy entrepreneurs and politicians sympathetic to their causes.

Popular media accounts have suggested there is a culture war raging between residents in red and blue states. Conversely, recent scholarship challenges that position and finds most Americans are not engaged in a culture war, but rather hold moderate positions on controversial social issues. Using public opinion data from the American National Election Study, we attempt to shed further light on the culture war debate. Our findings indicate that there are significant divisions between citizens who hold a literal interpretation of the Bible and those who do not. We conclude that a culture war does not rage between red and blue state residents as popular media accounts often portray; however, there is evidence of polarization within red and blue states with biblical beliefs at the center of this division.

The current U.S. poverty measure is outdated and has failed to keep up with public consensus on the minimum amount of income needed to "get along" in the United States in the 21st Century. One potential approach to revising the measure, based on recommendations made by a National Academy of Sciences panel in 1995, improves in some ways on the current measure, but has serious limitations of its own that require further research before it is adopted. Moreover, the NAS approach results in a poverty measure that would remain far below the public's get-along level. To address these problems, the incoming Administration should adopt a "tiered" poverty and economic inclusion measure that is modeled on the child poverty measure adopted in 2003 by the United Kingdom.

The recent visibility of transgender lives demonstrates the dawning of a new period in the potential to include transgender topics in sociology courses. The focus on transgender individuals, communities, and inclusive initiatives are gaining momentum on many public and private college and university campuses, awakening old and new curiosities, igniting student activists and advocates everywhere. Such developments provide an important opportunity for instructors who are motivated to create trans-friendly syllabi, courses, and classrooms. In this article, we briefly explore how transgender people have been used to teach sociological concepts and provide strategies to positively integrate transgender communities into the classroom. Ultimately, we intend this article to show new and more sensitive ways to include transgender experiences into a wide range of sociological courses.

External and internal forces threatened the apartheid state in the 1980s. The refusal to perform compulsory military service by individual white men and the increasing number of white South Africans who criticized the role of the military and apartheid governance had the potential to destabilize the gendered binaries on which white social order and Nationalist rule rested. The state constituted itself as a heterosexual, masculine entity in crisis and deployed a number of gendered discourses in an effort to isolate and negate objectors to military service. The state articulated a nationalist discourse that defined the white community in virile, masculine, and heroic terms. Conversely, "feminine" weakness, cowardice, and compromise were scorned. Objectors, as "strangers" in the public realm, were most vulnerable to homophobic stigmatization from the state and its supporters.

AbstractThe use of torture by the US armed forces and the CIA was not limited to "a few bad apples" at Abu Ghraib but encompassed a broader range of practices, including rendition to third countries and secret "black sites", that the US administration deemed permissible under US and international law. This article explores the various legal avenues pursued by the administration to justify and maintain its coercive interrogation programme, and the response by Congress and the courts. Much of the public debate concerned defining and redefining torture and cruel, inhuman and degrading treatment. While US laws defining torture have moved closer to international standards, they have also effectively shut out those seeking redress for mistreatment from bringing their cases before the courts and protect those responsible from prosecution.

ABSTRACTMalawi, like other countries in Africa, has a new land policy designed to clarify and formalise customary tenure. The country is poor with a high population density, highly dependent on agriculture, and the research sites are matrilineal-matrilocal, and near urban centres. But the case raises issues relevant to land tenure reform elsewhere: the role of 'traditional authorities' or chiefsvis-à-visthe state and 'community'; variability in types of 'customary' tenure; and deepening inequality within rural populations. Even before it is implemented, the pending land policy in Malawi is intensifying competition over land. We discuss this and the increase in rentals and sales; the effects of public debates about the new land policy; a new discourse about 'original settlers' and 'strangers'; and political manoeuvring by chiefs.

University of Calgary Waste management is a universal occupation that is expressed in many ways according to cultural mores and available resources. Efficient waste management is obligatory for maintaining public health, environmental sustainability, and visual aesthetics. Furthermore, the requirement to uphold these conditions is heightened in regions that rely economically on tourism, where foreign methods and expectations for waste management are introduced and implemented at the community level. This paper addresses these issues in relation to the Lake Atitl´n town of Panajachel, Guatemala, where tourism and garbage form an unlikely partnership across town politics, economics, and cultural diversity. Traditional waste management processes have shaped local behavior, continuing to present challenges for a region dealing with the influx of foreign actors, products, and ideas for waste management in Panajachel.

This is a study about the possibility of self-governance. We designed two versions of a step-level public good game, with or without a centralized sanctioning mechanism (CSM). In a baseline treatment participants play 14 rounds of the non-CSM game. In an automatic removal (AR) treatment participants play 7 rounds with CSM plus 7 rounds without CSM. In voted removal (VR) participants play 7 rounds with CSM followed by a voting stage to decide whether to keep CSM. All VR groups removed CSM. Contributions in AR and VR after CSM removal are dramatically higher than in the baseline. Most groups with a CSM history managed to cooperate until the last round. We do not find more cooperation in VR than in AR. Adapted from the source document.

This article examines whether multi-level governance (MLG) as a practice has been established in Sweden. It does so by dividing multi-level governance into vertical and horizontal dimensions. The article argues that there is a multi-level policy process within Swedish regional policy and that a degree of network governance has been introduced in Sweden through the Regional Growth Programmes and regional partnerships. Regional partnerships also demonstrate how the horizontal and vertical aspects of MLG have become intertwined. However, the article concludes that vertical MLG has not yet been fully introduced in Sweden because there is no new regional level. However, with the recommendations of the Committee on Public Sector Responsibilities, a new regional level in Sweden may not be too distant. Adapted from the source document.

Diplomatic relations between Russia & Paraguay were established in 1992 & since then, the two countries have made considerable progress regarding their foreign policy departments & intergovernmental agreements on trade & economic cooperation. As Russia wills to balance the trade turnover ($ 228.1 million in 2006, for 99.2 percent accounted by Paraguayan meat exports to Russia) through a well thought through trade & economic strategy. As Paraguay seems too small for Russian machinery & technical products, & in view of its advantageous geostrategic position at the center of South America, Russian experts are looking into the possibility to create in Paraguay joint export-oriented production plants to assemble Russian agriculture, road construction, machinery & equipment. Other possible projects are firefighting aviation for Paraguay, sister city partnerships, cooperation in law enforcement & public health, & an intensification of sport ties. O. van Zijl