Suchergebnisse

The aim of this paper is to analyze the Romanian studies, in postcommunism and inter-war period, upon Montesquieu, more specifically upon his writting, De l'esprit des lois. In order to understand and to create a Romanian tradition of liberalism, one needs to begin from its origins. Montesquieu created a new language, different from that of his predecessors, a moderate one. He used the philosophic reason as an instrument of inquiry. It is said that one cannot understand a philosopher unless one thinks in his terms. Do the Romanian studies upon Montesquieu use this instrument, the philosophic reason? If they used it, they would be able to clarify Montesquieu's writtings and to understand the moderate language of liberalism. It is from this perspective that this paper will analyze the Romanian studies, out of which only two are academic.

The article takes issue with the deeply entrenched historical conception about the shaping of social policies in pre-communist Romania, which indicates socialist politics and socialist-enlisted worker trade-unionism as the only significant agents of change, also depicting the non-socialist political forces of the time as participating to the process by merely employing the strategy of stern resistance and piecemeal concessions. The alternative view offered stresses the pivotal roles performed in the context by the ideological trend of socially-minded liberalism, by the movements of professional representation with petty entrepreneurial and white-collar constituencies and by the corporatist design for the representation of professional interests. The successive stages of the inquiry leading to the formulation of such interpretative theses - and inaugurated as a research on the relation between fascist modernism and the corporatist vision of rapid economic growth under an authoritarian political cover in the local milieu - are disclosed all throughout.

The positive, unifying ideological resources of liberal and progressive Islamic interpretations deserve more than ever to be exploited in the contemporary socio-political context. Their conceptual tools, principles and theses could solve the conflictual cleavage, politically manipulated, between Islam and Western modernity, without repudiating the references to an Islamic paradigm. Therefore, liberal and progressive Islamic understandings could avoid the recent superficial oscillation between two ideological -artificially constructed- extremes, namely either confining the discussions to the secular, colonialist or postcolonialist perspectives, or promoting the defensive opportunist neotraditionalist Islamic approaches, specific to the nationalist movements of the last century so-called Islamic revival. Liberal Islam does not fully adopt all liberal theses and does not obediently imitate Western philosophy. Liberal Islamic understandings are defined by the opposition against teocracy and by supporting the democracy. Women, minorities and non-Muslims' rights in Muslim-majority countries, freedom of thought and trust in human progress, are other essential tenets that are fundamented on contemporary understandings of the major Islamic sources. Trying to correct some excesses that the liberal Muslims were accused of, but maintaining the reformist tendencies, progressive Muslims' approach is centered on a "multiple critiqueˮ ‒ a simultaneous critique of the diverse discourses and communities in which Muslims are situated. Not only the authoritarian constructions of literalist, puritanist Muslims, the violation of human rights, freedom of expression and of religion, the oppression of women in some Muslim countries are condemned and deconstructed, but also some political, economic, intellectual hegemonic Western aspects of modernity. In Romania these contemporary tendencies of interpreting Islam are not yet represented at a community level.

Prefaţă / Attila GIDÓ, István HORVÁTH, Judit PÁL -- Legea naţionalităţilor din 1868 şi consecinţele ei / Gábor GÁNGÓ -- Antecedentele din Austria ale Legii naţionalităţilor din 1868 / Ágnes DEÁK -- Concepţiile despre naţionalitate ale lui József Eötvös în Ideile dominante / Attila DEMETER -- Contele Imre Mikó şi chestiunea naţionalităţilor / Ákos EGYED -- Uniune sau autonomie? : Reglementarea legală a uniunii Transilvaniei în 1868 / Judit PÁL -- Liberalism şi interes de putere : dileme politice privind libertăţile individuale şi cetăţeneşti din perioada dualismului din Ungaria / András CIEGER -- Identitate reprimată : legislaţie şi deznaţionalizare în Transilvania dualistă / Luminiţa IGNAT-COMAN -- Legea şcolară 38/1868 şi efectele sale asupra evoluţiei învăţământului confesional năsăudean / Mirela POPA-ANDREI / Mileniul şi naţionalităţile / Bálint VARGA-KUNA -- Cum să fie autonomia rusinilor? : cauza voievodatului subcarpatic / Csilla FEDINEC -- Proiecte pentru o lege a minorităţilor naţionale în România interbelică / Vasile CIOBANU -- O mică Ungarie în România Mare : Alternative pentru Secuime în proiectele maghiare dintre cele două războaie mondiale / Csaba ZAHORÁN / Evreii din România între 1938-1940 : De la statutul de cetăţean la cel de paria / Liviu CARARE -- Din piesă de teatru-discurs : cum se făcea politică în mod simbolic în anii 1980, într-o societate locală maghiară din România / Zsuzsa PLAINER -- Obiective şi concepţii în politica minoritară a Ungariei în perioada 1988-1993 / Balázs DOBOS / Discriminarea etnică şi rasială în jurisprudenţa Curţii Europene a Drepturilor Omului / Radu CHIRIŢĂ -- Legislaţia minoritară în Italia şi Slovenia / Sergiu CONSTANTIN / Legislaţia şi aplicarea drepturilor de protecţie a minorităţilor în Ucraina : experienţele politicii privind minorităţile într-un stat naţional nou / Mihály TÓTH -- Drepturile lingvistice ale minorităţilor şi utilizarea limbilor minoritare în România / István HORVÁTH -- Soluţii electorale speciale pentru minorităţi : legislaţia românească în perspectivă comparată / István Gergő SZÉKELY -- Sistemul drepturilor minoritare şi autonomia culturală în proiectul de lege privind statutul minorităţilor naţionale / Attila VARGA

By analyzing the parliamentary debates of 1866-1867 on foreigners' (notably Jews) requests for naturalization and property rights, this article tries to identify the parliamentarians' answers to the following questions: On what grounds were foreigners accepted as Romanian citizens? How did the parliamentarians define the foreigner? What was required from a foreigner in order to become a citizen? The overall objective is to identify some major themes that preoccupied the representatives of the nation, circumscribed around the primordial character of the "union" and of "nationality", with a special focus on the solutions proposed by the liberals. The argument is that the Parliament, by its vote, instead of granting citizenship rights, merely established the conditions according to which one could become a Romanian. In other words, the Romanian legislators considered it to be of outmost importance to recognize the quality of being a Romanian, that is, a member of an ethnic body, and not to define citizenship as a legal membership. "To be a Romanian" was more of an ethnic belonging, a "given", than citizenship or civic loyalty, defined through political and civic rights. It seems that citizenship was crushed by the primordial character of ethnic loyalty and by the weight of the state as expression and guarantor of the Romanian nation. In engaging the parliamentary debates about naturalization, the article attempts, first, to draw more nuanced conclusions about the lately much-debated character of citizenship in Romania and Eastern Europe during the mid-19th century. And second, such an analysis may provide a better understanding of the nature of political representation during the same period.