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Political culture is one of the most popular research areas related to the functioning of the sphere of politics. Contemporary research on political culture was initiated in the 1950s by American researchers Gabriel Almond and Sidney Verba. Their research was characterised by the assumption that the stability of a political system requires a balance between political structures and the accompanying political patterns. They pointed out that modern democratic institutions require civic participation and thus the development of a specific type of attitudes towards the sphere of politics referred to as the civic culture. In this article, the author analyses the social context in which the concepts of Almond and Verba arose, noting that they strongly influenced the way the concept of the civic culture was conceptualised. The author draws attention to the normative aspect of the theory of the American researchers, the consideration of which is necessary for a full understanding of the concept of the civic culture.

Abstract
This article examines the cultural production of Kaji Wataru, founder of the Zaika Nihonjinmin hansen dōmei [Japanese People's Antiwar League in China] to illuminate what strategies Kaji used to train prisoners-of-war and to convert Japanese soldiers as a way to counter fascism during the second Sino-Japanese War (1937–1945). Scholars have tended to focus on unravelling the history surrounding Kaji Wataru and the Antiwar League. In doing so, they have often overlooked the constructive role his cultural works played in that history and in his antiwar thought. The author aims to show how Kaji's reportage works, and plays, were the very media he used to develop and execute his antifascist visions and activities. The focus is on three reportage works and one play that best reflect Kaji's antifascist strategies. Analyzing the texts, the author highlights descriptions dealing with the organization and activities of the Antiwar League as well as the cooperation with the Chinese resistance as part of the popular front in East Asia.

The article discusses securitization of memory politics and identity politics as a part of academic tools and some kind of political tools. The author characterizes the process of securitization analyzing both academic and political discourse of the last decade. The securitization of the politics of memory and identity, as well as the politicization of history are reflected in academic publications and political declarations, pouring out into hot discussions, debates, wars of memory, struggle of identities. Research findings can create basis for a political turn or a new foreign policy course. Securitization puts the category of identity in the context of international security while identity politics could be used as a soft power element or foreign policy tool. There has been a turn towards defining identity politics as a concrete ideological weapon that can be used against opponents in the ideological and political struggle. This significantly changes meaning of identity politics. The author considers that in scientific analysis it is advisable to avoid extreme politization of identity.

The article is devoted to the study of the role of historical memory of the Great Patriotic War as a resource of soft power of the Russian Federation. The research methods used are the method of historicism, institutional approach and comparative analysis. In this context, the countries that are members of the Eurasian Economic Union (Russia, Belarus, Armenia, Kazakhstan and Kyrgyzstan) and the BRICS (Russia, Brazil, India, China, South Africa) are considered as objects of implementation of the domestic soft power policy. The author reveals the awareness of the peoples of these states about the history of the Second World War and the Great Patriotic War, the attitude of political elites to the events of 1939-1945, peculiarity of state politics of historical memory in relation to this global conflict. Based on this analysis, proposals are formulated to optimize the Russian strategy of soft power in the EEU and BRICS countries. The author concludes that the narrative of the Great Victory is potentially a very effective resource of modern Russia's soft power.

In this paper, the author argues that the conflict between the copious amount of digital data processed by public organisations and the need for policy-relevant insights to aid public participation constitutes a 'public information paradox'. Machine learning (ML) approaches may offer one solution to this paradox through algorithms that transparently collect and use statistical modelling to provide insights for policymakers. Such an approach is tested in this paper. The test involves applying an unsupervised machine learning approach with latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) analysis of thousands of public comments submitted to the United States Transport Security Administration (TSA) on a 2013 proposed regulation for the use of new full body imaging scanners in airport security terminals. The analysis results in salient topic clusters that could be used by policymakers to understand large amounts of text such as in an open public comments process. The results are compared with the actual final proposed TSA rule, and the author reflects on new questions raised for transparency by the implementation of ML in open rule-making processes.

Zachary Thomas Dodson is an American book designer who is particularly interested in exploring the visual possibilities of narrative. He is the co-founder of the Chicago-based press Featherproof Books (2005) and the author of Bats of the Republic: An Illuminated Novel (2015) in addition to an earlier novel, Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring Boring (2008), under the pseudonym Zach Plague. In this interview, Dodson discusses the role of design in literary production and highlights the potential of typography, page layout and non-verbal elements such as maps to constitute integral parts of a literary narrative. Relating his work to earlier as well as to contemporary instances of visual experimentation with narrative, Dodson comments on his inspirations and influences while manifesting promising paths for literary production and the publishing industry. In the second part of the interview, Dodson discusses the intricacies and challenges of working on Bats of the Republic as both author and designer, and reveals his intentions with regard to his next book project.

AbstractIn an era of increasingly public diplomacy, conventional wisdom assumes that leaders who compromise damage their reputations and lose the respect of their constituents, which undermines the prospects for international peace and cooperation. This article challenges this assumption and tests how leaders can negotiate compromises and avoid paying domestic approval and reputation costs. Drawing on theories of individuals' core values, psychological processes, and partisanship, the author argues that leaders reduce or eliminate domestic public constraints by exercising proposal power and initiating compromises. Employing survey experiments to test how public approval and perceptions of reputation respond to leaders' strategies across security and economic issues, the author finds attitudes toward compromise are conditioned by the ideology of the audience and leader, with audiences of liberals being more supportive of compromise. In the US case, this results in Republican presidents having greater leeway to negotiate compromises. The article's contributions suggest that leaders who exercise proposal power have significant flexibility to negotiate compromise settlements in international bargaining.

A sheer volume of multibillion concessional flows from leading international donors makes monitoring and evaluation of aid projects a sine qua non of development discourse and practice. The assessment criteria vary significantly and depend on the objectives and interests of donor countries promoted through development cooperation.This paper examines national systems of monitoring and evaluation of aid effectiveness established by leading donors. Among the most noticeable recent trends the author emphasizes a transition from aid effectiveness to development effectiveness paradigm and an inclusion of indicators of diplomatic engagement and security provision in evaluation matrices.Special attention is paid on the hierarchy of goals in national systems of development cooperation, which is illustrated with an example of the United States. The US case shows key principles of ensuring policy coherence at different levels of goal-setting — from the National Security Strategy to planning individual projects and programs. In conclusion the author shares his view on the applicability of foreign experience in evaluating development assistance projects in the Russian Federation.

"Stelele şi lalelele": Essay of Micromonography of a Romanian Inflectional Class (I). This article is the first of a three-part study aimed at reconstructing the origin and the history of a sub-class of nouns that, from a Romance perspective, has been considered a distinctive feature of Romanian, as well as at bringing into discussion its current status. The object of the study is the sub-class of f nouns ending in the sg NA in stressed vowel, and with pl in -le. In this first part, the author lays out the matter, illustrating the distinctiveness of the morpheme f pl le with respect to Romance pl endings and describing the morphological traits of this class in contemporary Romanian as "radical theme" nouns, i.e. f nouns lacking a specific morpheme for sg NA (f√ ø). In preparation to the following two parts of the study, the author discusses here the Latin origin of f√ ø in Common Romanian, identifying the members of the sub-class directly inherited from Latin.

The study constitutes a brief historical overview of the development of the contract of mandate, as regulated in Romanian law. Firstly, the roots of this contract in antiquity and in Roman law are discussed, and the evolution of its major characteristics are revealed. Subsequently, the author presents the regulations applicable to the contract of mandate under the first modern codifications of Romanian civil law in the Calimach and Caragea codes, the Commercial Code of Wallachia of 1840, the Romanian Civil code of 1864, the Commercial Code of 1887, and the Civil Code of 2009, currently in force. The author presents the major historic evolutions of the Romanian regulation pertinent to the nature of the contract, the parties, their remuneration, the effects of the contract inter partes and towards third persons as well as the changes in regulatory logic from the differentiation of commercial and civil mandate to the unification of the two institutions in the Civil Code of 2009.

Social Work is all about Sensemaking, but Sensemaking, as we currently know it, is not fit for purpose in Social Work. Developed by Karl E. Weick, Sensemaking describes the process of coming to understand and act in circumstances that are confusing or otherwise problematic. In this article, the author provides a creative and inventive response to the limitations of Sensemaking in Social Work through the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze, and the use of artistic practices. In this article, he presents two stories; firstly, a story about overcoming 'stuckness' in a study of English Children's Centre practitioners, and secondly, a bigger story about the limitations of Sensemaking in Social Work. These two stories are connected by Deleuze, and Art. The author responds to the opportunities presented by Deleuze by creating a series of visual Motifs, which act as idea-objects, used in his Sensemaking. He argues that whilst Social Workers do not need to be artists to make better sense of situations, they can use their own Motifs to better consider materiality, sense and affect in situations.

In this article, the author analyzes the historical past of Sicily, a region that became the object of the Arab- Berber, or Saracen conquest in the early Middle Ages, and the current realities of this region of Italy in the light of the migration problem. The researcher in detail discusses the background, characteristics, time frame and results medieval "Arabization" of the region, the similarities and diff erences of Islamization in Sicily and other European regions undergoing the expansion of the Muslim. Special emphasis is placed on the relation of Sicily to the Muslims: the author examines the specifi city of the interpretation of the concept "Islam" in various segments of the population, features of the mapping Sicilian, religious affi liation and regional origin of migrants with their status in the local evaluation system, the reasons for the existence of positive attitudes towards Muslims and Islam, as well as the identity of the Sicilians and migrants and interpretation of each of these categories of the population of the terms "own" and "alien".

AbstractUsing Hungary as a case study and focusing on legislative policies and the practical application of hate crime legislation, this article shows the various ways legal policy can become misguided in the labyrinth of identity politics, minority protection, and penal populism. The first mistake states can make, the author argues, is not to adopt hate crime legislation. The second error arguably pertains to conceptualizing hate crimes as an identity protection but not a minority-protection mechanism and instrument. The third fallacy the author identifies concerns legislative and practical policies that conceptualize victims based on self-identification and not on the perpetrator's (or the wider community's) potential perception and classification. The fourth flaw concerns the abuse of the concept of hate crime when it is applied in interethnic conflicts wherein members of minority communities are perpetrators and the victims are members of the majority communities. The fifth is institutional discrimination through the systematic underpolicing of hate crimes.

The relevance of the interpretation of constitutional and legal guarantees of the right to vote is mediated by isolated scientific research in this area, as well as the lack of a universal approach to legal guarantees. In this regard, the purpose of the article is to argue and disclose the author's definitive aspect of the claimed guarantees. In the work, the author named and characterized the normative (based exclusively on legal means) with the perspective of a branch of legal and technical; regulatory and institutional (combines the formal aspect with the activities of authorized entities) and associated legal (including a set of legal and other aspects) approaches to the definition of legal guarantees. Based on the second approach, as well as combining the guarantees of the right to vote directly guarantees of the subjective right itself and guarantees of its implementation, the author offers a definition of constitutional and legal guarantees of the right to vote.

This article discusses the effective operations of Spanish libraries in association with the Spanish Federation of Societies of Archivist, Librarians, Documentarists and Museologists (FESABID) and the information resources, provided by the International Federation of Library Associations (IFLA) to support libraries around the world during the pandemic. The author highlights the role of Spanish librarians in their struggle with fake news, which constitute a menace for Spanish citizens' life and safety. The article evaluates the "eBiblio" online loan service' work experience, launched by the Ministry of Culture and Sports of Spain in collaboration with Spanish libraries in 2002. The article considers the information specialists' experience in the development of the State Protocol of the Ministry of Health in Spain regarding the libraries reopening after the pandemic. The article considers the IFLA Library Map of the World as the main tool for getting reliable library statistics in pandemic. The author attempts to comprehend the role of a library as an institution of culture in the post-pandemic era.