Suchergebnisse

The paper looks into the effectiveness of the application of preferential quotas for electoral posts & compares the different quota systems in the EU countries. Starting from the assumption that political parties in contemporary democracies are major actors in the representation of women in national parliaments, the author analyses the (un)favourable conditions for women in candidacy procedures & some examples of (un)successful quota implementations. The conclusion is that a successful application of the quotas for women depends on a set of additional variables such as the quota application in proportional electoral systems, the entrenchment of the quotas in women's movements & their consistent & long-term implementation. Tables, Graphs, References. Adapted from the source document.

Croatia's EU accession has been covered in Croatian dailies as one of the pivotal foreign-policy events of the past several years judging by the number of the pertinent texts in the periods covered by this analysis (the positive avis & the postponement of the negotiations): in the four studied months in 2004 & 2005, a total of 1,523 texts in the three analyzed dailies ( Vecernji list, Jutarnji list, Vjesnik) were identified. Regardless of the differences in the profile of these dailies, there are no significant differences in reporting, which shows that the process of Croatia's EU accession is not only a popular topic but also utilized by the media & politics. The content analysis of the three Croatian dailies confirms that the European Union is presented within a political framework, while a whole array of other related topics has been neglected in the coverage. References. Adapted from the source document.

Looking at the European Constitution & the legal attainments of the European Union from the perspective of the modern nation-state leads to aporia & Euroskepticism since the European Union has never been, nor will it ever be, a political community modelled after the nation-state. The nation-state as a constitutional institution is not tantamount to political processes; it is one of the historical options of the political. The state & politics cannot be equated: the nation-state is a political institution while politics is a process with various alternatives of institutionalization. These two sides, the constitutional state & the political processes, are in the relationship of soft incommensurability & it is not quite possible to equate them in some higher association. Equating the constitutional state & the political activity in present-day debates on the European Constitution results in Euroskepticism. Conservative theoreticians of the state & politics cannot study the constitutional state separately from political processes. For them Europe is possible solely as a constitutional state with democratic legitimation; otherwise it will never come into being. These theoreticians view the relationship between the constitution & politics as the means-ends or cause-effect category, & not as an open-ended process between two one unequatable media that are semantically mutually irritating. The goal of the European politics is not a European state, nor is the goal of the European constitution to curb the spontaneity of European political processes. The European Union is an open-ended semantic relationship between its legal attainments & its political processes. Consequently, the concept of democracy as a political form will have to be redefined. The European Union as a political community sui generis should be explained from the perspective of contemporary theories evolved along the lines of the linguistic & deconstructivist reversal of the modern substantionalist rationalism, universalism & cosmopolitism. The major contribution of these post-modern theories is that they do not consider political reality as an objective given, but as a construct for which we know how it was produced so that we can change it. This means that the object of study is not the constitutional-legal reality but the knowledge of the constitutional-legal reality that is continuously expanded by means of the new designations of the semantically nonexistent political environment. The European Constitution & the European politics are in the relationship of mutual semantic irritation, but are not identical & will never become identical. References. Adapted from the source document.

This paper discusses the dilemmas regarding the nature of the European Union in contemporary political science and in the field of European Studies as a multidisciplinary and interdisciplinary field. The first part focuses on the evolution of the European Union from the original European Coal and Steel Community, via the European Economic Community, to its growth into a political union. The Maastricht Treaty, which lay the foundations of the European Union as a political union of its member states, instigated a debate on the actual nature of this supranational union as political construct. Consequently, the author analyses the various characteristics of the European Union, which is manifest in various forms, and asserts that it has some "state-like features" and some "organisation-like features", which are characteristic of international organizations. In the approach to the European Union as a supra-state community, some essential traits of both federation and confederation are simultaneously manifest, corresponding to two tendencies in the development of the European Union as a super-state. Moreover, there is the conception of the European Union as an empire. Finally, this paper specifies the tasks of present-day political science and the need to find a new heuristic instrument, which, according to the author, can be found in the conception of the political system that was introduced in political science (comparative politics) by Gabriel Almond and David Easton. Such an approach, which is nowadays further developed by Jean-Pierre Quermonne, Wolfgang Wessels and Simon Hix, is additionally strengthened by the fact that various models of democratic practice are being incorporated in the European Union in opposition to the basic, legitimacy-related democratic deficit, models which confirm the possible conclusion regarding a European Union as a complex community with many faces. Adapted from the source document.

In the second part of the text the author looks into the paradox of the concept of justice as discerned by Jacques Derrida, & analyzes the tradition of the European constitutional law. Since the constitution & politics are discordant & semantically irritating mediums, the author argues that the European Union is an open semantic relationship of legal acquisitions & political processes. The European Union should be explained by means of contemporary, postmodernist theories derived from the linguistic & deconstructivist reversals of the modern substantial rationalism, universalism & cosmopolitism. Consequently, the constitution & the law are not underpinned by the political or any other specific power; on the contrary, it is the unspecific power of the constitution & the law that enables the gradual development & strengthening of the European law & the constitution without the extra constitutional authorities as the disguised power that traditionally legitimizes law. References. Adapted from the source document.