Suchergebnisse

This paper seeks to find out to what extent the process of EU accession has influenced legal regulations concerning the creation & functioning of social & political actors. Through the analysis of various statutes & changes made to them, the paper tries to determine the role the EU plays in amending assembly legislation. The actors under scrutiny include political parties, professional organizations, labor unions, & civil society organizations. The paper concludes that the most influenced field of actors was the area of chambers of professionals which was obliged to conform to requirements for the free movement of people & services in the European Union in order to comply with European law. The Czech Republic was quite leisurely in their harmonization of statutes, with the majority of them passed just before accession to the EU. An interesting part of the problem concerns the question of political party membership, which is still reserved only for Czech citizens. However, European citizenship, with its voting rights to the European Parliament & local magistrates, is arguably going to push slowly for change even in this domain. Adapted from the source document.

The first question that we ask ourselves in our article is whether the accounting of the central bank is supposed to respect the principles of internationally accepted standards (especially the International Financial Reporting Standards). We are looking for the basic differences in understanding of terms such as (il)liquidity & (in)solvency on the level of central & commercial banking. We analyze the economic reasons for origination of the long foreign exchange position of the CNB which, under the circumstances of trend appreciation of the exchange rate of the Czech crown, is leading to a cumulative loss. We are discussing whether the current level of foreign exchange reserves of the CNB is excessive or adequate. Special attention is paid to the monetary & financial impact of the loss of the central bank. We are pointing out that losing the central bank means profit for market subjects at the same time. It is not just a "fictitious" accounting problem & it can have its factual impact on the national economy. At the end we are summarizing & assessing the individual opinions regarding the loss of the CNB. Adapted from the source document.

In this contribution, we compare the correlation of supply & demand shocks for the countries of the euro zone & the acceding countries in Central Europe. Demand & supply shocks are recovered from estimated structural VAR models of output growth & inflation in individual countries. We find that Poland & Hungary face already a comparably high similarity with the countries of the current euro zone. However, the remaining countries show still significant differences in business cycles as compared to the euro zone. This is likely to indicate that the loss of monetary sovereignty may be costly. In turn, the integration is expected to align the business cycles of these countries in the medium run. We document a similar development for the countries of the European Union in the 1990s. 4 Figures, 22 References. Adapted from the source document.

Approximately 100 thousand men of Czech origin died during the wartime operations
in the years 1914 to 1918. The majority were aged between 23 and 35. The reproductive losses have
been estimated at another 610 thousand (550 thousand children that were never born due to the
absence of a man in the household and another 60 thousand civilian dead). In 1914 the population
in the Czech territories numbered 10 million 283 thousand, in 1919 this number decreased
to 9 million 921 thousand. The ratio of men to women decreased (in 1920 there were 92.5 men to
every 100 women). This imbalance in age frequency, a result of the low birth rate, had a long term
effect firstly on the number of marriages, then on the birth rate and eventually on the mortality
rate. These long term effects were evidently still present at the close of the 20th Century.

This article deals with the Europeanization of the German parliament as a difficult process of finding a relationship between the German government (Bundesregierung), upper chamber (Bundesrat) & lower chamber (Bundestag) concerning EU-related affairs. One of the results of the recent process of Europeanization is the loss of influence of parliaments in EU member countries. The decision-making process within the Council of the EU can hardly be followed by parliaments & parliamentary committees. This has led to adaptation processes within the polities of EU member countries. This article follows the development of EC & EU-related institutions & committees in both chambers of the German parliament, as well as agreements & changes to the German constitutions adopted in order to assure that the parliament would not lose its influence in EU-related affairs during the period from 1957 to 2006. The conclusion is that there were differences between both chambers of parliament in the way they tried to secure their interests. However, both chambers partly lost their influence although they changed their structures & negotiated new agreements trying to secure their positions. Adapted from the source document.

Energy efficiency improvements have become a major hope for decoupling the energy demand from economic growth and for achieving environmental goals. Nevertheless, the effectiveness of policies based on promoting energy efficiency may be undermined by behavioral responses. A more efficiently produced energy service becomes cheaper and economic theory then suggests that consumers should demand more of it, which will cause a loss of the potential technological saving. The phenomenon is called the rebound effect and it has become a focus of energy economists since early 80s. However, even today there is no clear consensus on its importance. Quantification of the rebound effect is mainly hampered by poor data availability and the comparison of results is not straightforward due to methodological differences. Our study concentrates right on the economic theory of the demand for energy services, definitions and their applicability to empirical estimation. It summarizes the state of knowledge and elaborates on plausible models for empirical quantification of the rebound effect which should bear consistent results. Adapted from the source document.

Surveys often reveal that the number of children people would like to have is greater than the number they actually have. This article examines the question of why people actually want children and bases its answers on data from the 2006 Value of Children Survey, which reintroduces the value of children concept from the 1970s. The battery of survey questions used identified six dimensions of the value of children (The positives of parenthood; Natural drives and goals; Tradition and social status; Social pressure; Limitations and losses; and Decision inhibitors). The respondents, young people between the ages of 28 and 34, see the main reasons for deciding to have children in the positive feelings associated with raising children and with successful parenthood as a natural part of life. They associate parenthood less with responses about social norms and pressure or with rational considerations about all the pros and cons of having children, and they see parenthood as their own, individual decision. A data analysis based on a multinomial logistic regression shows that declared attitudes to a limited extent influence the preferred number of children and that the Czech population is still dominated by the idea of the two-child family with two biological parents, while declared voluntary childlessness is still a marginal phenomenon.

Violent conflict is very old in human society. The development of military technology brought with itself the worst tragedies loss of human live and material devastation in the second half of 20th century in the Horn of Africa. This region is one of the centers of various political violent conflicts in the world, according to length of these violent conflicts, the number of death of people, mainly civilian, refugees and internal displaced persons (IDP). This study elucidates the root causes of long wars in the Horn of Africa focusing mainly on South Sudan and Somalia. It also illustrates how the Super Powers during the Cold War helped their client states to prolong the suffering of people in the region. When Socialist system disappeared from Eastern Europe, Mengistu Haile Mariam's and Siyad Barre's regime ignominiously collapsed. In Ethiopia Amhara power elite, who ruled the Empire state from 1889 to 1991 lost their state power and Tigrian guerrilla fighters captured it through the power of the gun, Eritrea gained its independence from Ethiopia, South Sudan is emerging from long heinous war to independence. The violent conflict in Somalia transformed after the old regime demise in 1991 and the new leaders unable to build new central government. Somalia is fragmented and became the good example of failed state in the theory of contemporary political sociology. The paper tries to explain these complex violent conflicts in this part of Africa.

According to the 1867 constitution the Habsburg Monarchy's armed forces consisted
of the common army, the navy, the Austrian Landwehr and the Landsturm. The armed forces
had authority over three ministries and were themselves subject to the rule of three parliamentary
institutions. From the beginning the growth of the armed forces had not kept pace
with that of the population as a whole. There was a low volume of conscripts and poor training
of reservists. This resulted in a relatively small army both in peace time and during war and
meant that by the spring of 1918 Austria-Hungary had practically exhausted its available human
resources. This was exacerbated by the high number of losses, both through death and capture.
On the battlefield the number of deaths is thought to have been between 905,000 and 1,200,000
with 1.8 million injured. At the same time the number of deaths and illness in the hinterland
increased while the rate of fertility dropped. In order to resolve this the government applied
a number of measures: the upper age limit of conscription increased, the necessary standards
for recruitment were lowered, training period was shortened, more use of weapons, factory
workers were replaced with women, prisoners of war and workers from the occupied territories.
However at this time the importance of the "war economy" was also growing which resulted in
an increase in firms requesting the release of their employees from military service. In 1918 the
Habsburg Monarchy had not only exhausted its human resources but was also on the brink of
economic collapse.

The origin of the apartheid regime was based on the Calvinist idea of Afrikaners being "the nation privileged by God." This idea had resulted in sharp discrimination of the African population since the 1850's. This political process was even more strengthened during the Nationalist Party (NP) period of government after the 1948 elections. Afrikaner nationalism reached its peak in May 1961 with the unilateral declaration of an independent South African Republic. But the apartheid regime entered into a period of deep crisis at the end of the 70's, and the fragile status quo started to become untenable. The new Prime Minister PW Botha initiated a reform process, which was refused by conservative members. They withdrew from the NP and formed the Conservative Party (CP). Its strongly nationalistic rhetoric was caused by the increasing activity of black organizations, and was reflected in the results of the 1987 elections when it became the strongest opposition party with 30% of the votes. Nevertheless, the reform process continued. The new president FW de Klerk legalized the black organizations, released political prisoners, and arranged the national referendum in which white voters decided to end the apartheid regime. Together with the consecutive loss of influential positions in the army and the death of the CP's leader, it substantially weakened the position of the Afrikaner conservative right wing. Finally, one section of the right wing decided to terminate the boycott of negotiations and to participate in the forthcoming elections. The only Afrikaner party was called the Freedom Front (FF), but it gained only 2% of the votes. The peaceful course during and after the elections weakened the conservatives even further. In the elections of 1999 and 2004, the FF didn't exceed even 1% of votes and is now a marginalized political party. Some militarized illegal organizations still exist in South Africa, but the government has been successful in eliminating these groups. Afrikaner nationalism still exists, but due to the evolution of the political situation it is diminishing. Adapted from the source document.