Suchergebnisse

The author analyzes the interpretations by Jean-Marie Guehenno and Helmut Willke of the end of the national state within the context of contemporary debates on globalisation. The author thinks that in their analyses both authors have come up th similar insights, particularly those regarding the assessment of the functional role which may be analytically attributed to the national state in the present and the future. Although their observations coincide with the debates on globalisation going on in political economy and political science, their conclusions are not in line with the special structure of political activity. Unlike their state/theoretic "hegelianism" (Guehenno) and system theory, functional definition of government activity (Willke), the author looks into the contemporary operation of the state from the legal/philosophical perspective. (SOI : PM: S. 37)

Most Croatian Serb organisations were established between 1883 and 1903. In that period Serbs created the Serbian Bank, 56 various financial institutions, the Association of Serb Agricultural Societies, and the economic organisation Privrednik (Economist). The Serbian Bank was the strongest financial institution in the Monarchy, which backed the economic and cultural development of Serbs inside and outside of it. On the other hand, Serbs had not created significant cultural institutions, but did establish numerous literary and singing societies and reading halls, which were instrumental in promoting national identity. Culture was a framework for political activity. It should be noted that all those organisations were identified as Serb, had their statues written in Cyrillic alphabet and in Serbian language, which testifies that they organised quite freely and without obstruction. (SOI : CSP: S. 509)

The essay describes the evolution of the concept of political culture, from th concepts such as Comte's 'consensus', Durkheim's 'collective awareness', Weber's 'significance of individual actions', to Parson's 'action frame of reference', and Mead's 'national character'. The development began with Comte's search for differentia specifica of social sciences in relation to oth positive sciences and finished in 1963 with the introduction of the concept of political culture into political science by G. Mmond and S. Verba. Our analysis has shown that many definitions of political culture point out that i essence lies in people's beliefs since political culture is a set of beliefs regarding politics. As much as it may seem a paradox, it cannot be reduced to mere individual beliefs, but represents a system of inter-subjective opinions on various political objects. This explains the possible discrepancies between the political events and the political beliefs of the people, between their behaviour and political culture, and so on. Contrary to the belief of some authors, it has been shown how political culture may and should be taken as a common denominator for a variety of opinions on politics. Political attitudes, values, norms, public opinion and political ideologies are nothing but different manifestations of political culture. Thus, the concept of political culture includes diverse facets of the subjective attitude of people towards politics. This is the asset and not the downside of this concept, as some authors would have it. It is pointed out that the manifold manifestations of political culture do not carry the same 'weight' in explaining the political activism of people and the functioning of political systems. The relationship between these manifestations is extremely complex and a challenge for research. It is this very relationship that could explain the stable and less stable (i.e. stable and vacillating) reactions of people in their political activity. (SOI : PM: S. 128)

The author primarily studies the works of Croatian and non-Croatian theologians and historians puplished since the 1980s which deal with the cultural and political activities of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. In the article's introduction, the author stresses that in recent times there has been a growth of interest in this topic because of the increased political activity of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the former Yugoslavia and its attitude toward Serbian aggression in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina. He also cites publications written by Croatians and non-Croatians that were published from 1918 to 1982. The main issues of his analysis are the jurisdiction of the Patriarchate of Pec outside of the Ottoman Empire's borders; the problem of the union of churches during the 17th and 18th centuries; the role of the Serbian Orthodox Church in the process of Serbian national integration in Croatia and Bosnia-Hercegovina during the 19th and early 20th century; and finally, the problem of theological debates and political developments during the 20th century. Special emphasis is also placed on the behaviour of the Church during the course of the Second World War, when it collaborated with German occupational forces. After the war, the Serbian Orthodox Church not only kept silent about this, but it also made unsubstantiated claims about the wartime collaboration of the Croatian Catholic Hierarchy and the Croatian people. The author concludes by saying that further research is needed into these and other related topics so that new light may be thrown on the more than three hundred year long history of the Serbian Orthodox Church in Croatia. (SOI : CSP: S. 176)

Petar Rogulja's article "Before the Dawn" (1916) led to an intense debate about the organization of the Croatian Catholic Movement (Hrvatski katolicki pokret - HKP). He is important because he elaborated the ideology of the movement, which played an important role for Catholicism in the political life of Croatia. Rogulja and his supporters (the 'nacionalci' or 'nationalists') tried to reorganize he HKP into a "total system" (potpuni sistem). This meant that cultural and economic organizations were to be included as integral parts of a future political party. His opponents (the integralists or 'integralci') were not successful in attacking his policy. After the "Kingdom of Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes", the first Yugoslavia, was formed (1918), the seniors of the Church organized their own political party - Hrvatska pucka stranka (HPS - Croatian Popular Party). The party claimed to represent "positive elements of the Christian congregation", but also claimed that it was "non-confessional". The seniors made a commitment to "interconfessionalism". The creation of the "Catholic Action - Katolicka akcija" (KA) by Pius XI. provided official support for those Catholics that did not support the policy direction taken by the HKP. Unlike the HKP, which was organized from below, that is to say, by the laity outside of the auspices of the Church hierarchy, the organization of the KA was initiated from above, by the Church hierarchy as a whole. The KA, as defined by the encyclical "Ubi arcano Dei" (1922), along with other acts of the Holy See and the Catholic Church hierarchy, was not to include organizations intending to achieve "mundane objectives", thus, political parties. A political party was at the heart of the HKP, but even though this was the case, Rogulja's supporters contributed to the organization of the KA. Though the KA was meant to be non-political, this did not mean that it was indifferent to politics generally, or to those who based their political activity on Christian/Catholic tenets. Seniors faithful to Rogulja's orientation believed that members of the KA would support their party in political matters. In any case, the leaders of the Catholic Church throughout Croatian lands never obligated its members to support the HPS. Opponents of the seniors' political party, mainly adherents of the Croatian Union of the Eagle (1923), accused them of anti-clericalism. The political disputes among Catholic activists in Croatia was brought to an end, but not resolved, by the Yugoslav Monarch's suspension of the Vidovdan constitution in 1929, at which time political parties where outlawed. (SOI : CSP: S. 455f.)

In the research traditions of social and political science two central answers are being sought. The first is, what is the relationship between the specific con-figurations of the proponents of social changes and the particular outcomes of their activity? The other is, which changes in the configuration of the proponents lead to better results than the existing ones relative to th value criteria such as peace, feasible development, or social justice? This makes the reference frame-work of contemporary discussions on institutional shaping of the relations between the state and the society. In this work, the author first mentions three dominant dimensions of social change to which all of us are exposed. Second, by changing perspective, he goes over from a passive to an active approach in order to observe the actors (citizens) and the forms of their activity (civilness) that might challenge th forces of change and transform them into tolerable or even desirable outcomes. And third, he contributes to the discussion about civilness and depicts in bigger detail six fallacies that must be avoided if one wants to attain a competent configuration of activity. (SOI : SOEU: S. 37)

The author follows the activity of A. Ciliga, one of the most prominent Croatian communists in the period between the two wars, in the international movement of the left. The article presents Ciliga's theoretical and political views in the thirties when he belonged to the Trocki circle and criticised Stalin's regime. The author concludes that Ciliga was the first to elaborate on the concept of antisovietism. (SOI : CSP: S. 449)

The author's thesis stated in the title is based on the theoretical and practical experience of modern political regimes, particularly on the example of the Croatian postcommunist experience. The author shows how the belated political constitution of the nation has occurred at the expense of political emancipation, pluralization and democratization. Small nations, which did not take part in the creation of modern state and the establishment of the contemporary political and legal culture, suffer from a double setback: they did not have a state of their own and are regarded small, "unhistorical" peoples. The fascination and obsession with the state and the identification of the nation with the state is especially visible in those postcommunist societies that have not gone through the process of political emancipation, i.e. the emancipation of the state. The author points out that the fascination with the state has had serious consequences for the development of democracy since any oppositional opinion and activity or a criticism of the government is disqualified as an attack on the state. This fascination and the identification of the nation and the state is a barrier to state building since it stands in the way of its emancipation and integrational processes. (SOI : PM: S. 109)

The author discusses the basic structure of Mancur Olson's political economy. He highlights three concepts on which it is based - public goods, interest groups, and selective incentives. The last concept represents Olson's innovation in contemporary political science. The author's central methodical assumption is based on the insight that Olson's key theory is linked with the so-called public goods paradox. Unlike private goods, public goods are non-competitive and non-exclusive, which means that it is not possible to bar those who do not share the costs of their production from using them. On the basis of this, Olson has developed the original theory of interest groups. By looking into the costs of organizing along interest lines as a collective activity whose result is a public good, he distinguishes between large, heterogeneous, and small, homogeneous groups. Besides, he has shown that, regarding public goods, individuals tend to behave as free riders, defaulters who try to avoid the costs of securing these goods. The author shows that Olson has, notwithstanding certain flimsiness of his reductionist methodology, significantly revamped political science. (SOI : PM: S. 202)

The United States of America are the front runner of the contemporary process of globalization. The global American superiority in the political, military, economic, and cultural spheres goes hand in hand with the globalization trends, focusing on the activity of the global leader. The design of the new strategic approach which was to include its vision of the new relations as well as of its global leading role, has been unhurried and circumspect. In the course of two Clinton's mandates the finishing touches of that new outlook got concrete contours in practical actions, so it seems that the search for the place of the leader is soon going to called off. The American politics is entering the next millennium as a well defined and organized enterprise with well thought out global objectives. (SOI : PM: S. 41)

The article deals, at various levels, with the limits and scope of the media activity, on the example of the latest Balkan war. On the theoretical level, there are three basic modalities in political communication: the positive propaganda (the so called carrot system), the negative propaganda (hard propaganda, aimed at destroying the enemy and its institutions) and, finally, the military propaganda with the military action, i.e. the system of communicating with a "stick". All these modes have been used in the war for Kosovo: Serbia had been positively conditioned for at least the entire decade, then a somewhat stricter model of the negative propaganda was used, and when this led nowhere, in 1999, Milosevic felt the full force of the state-of-the-art military equipment and the communication with a "stick". The author concludes that the media are powerful, but not all- powerful i.e. that they are eclipsed by the military communication, wars and victories or defeats. (SOI : S. 119)

The maxim that the people is the agent of the constituent power has, since the French revolution, been a universally accepted answer to the issue of the origin and the degree of validity of constitutional law which, as the ultimate norm of a state's legal order has no other higher positive law norm. But that maxim disregards political reality. Neither is it convincing from the point of view of the theory of state. The people is not the subject of activity but onl of reference. The maxim on the constituent power of the people is a democratic myth. As such it is polyvalent: the reinforcement of revolution or its prohibition determine whether the existing constitutional regime is to be overthrown or legitimised. The doctrine of the constituent power of the people is not cognitively rewarding as a theory of legitimation, either, since the effectiveness of a constitution does not depend on its provenance but on the reception it gets here and now from its addressees: state agencies and citizens. (SOI : PM: S. 63)

The author discusses the works by Croatian and foreign theologians and historians (Ivo Pilar, Alois Hudal, Janko Simrak, Krunoslav Draganovic, Fran Grivec and Dragutin Nezic) about the Serbian Orthodox Church which appeared in the inter-war period. These authors posed a series of questions which are still open for debate today. Pilar describes the Serbian Orthodox Church as an institution which has an important role in the process of Serbian national integration. Hudal analyzes the reasons for the decline of Catholicism in the Balkans, discussing the negative consequences which befell the Roman Catholic Church in the Yugoslav Monarchy, which supported the expansion of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The works of Simrak, Nezic, and Draganovic deal with the complex process of attempting a union between the Roman Catholic Church and orthodox Christians. The author mentions that these writers and their works are not well known to the Croatian public, and that only during the 1980s was more intensive research undertaken by Croatian academics on the topic of the political and cultural activity of the Serbian Orthodox Church. The author concludes the article by suggesting that these works by Croatian and foreign historians and theologians can serve as the basis for further research on this topic. (SOI : CSP: S. 573f.)

As regards the concern for and protection of artifacts of Croatian culture, the Society occupies an unparalleled place in Croatian history. Innumerable times it has supported, when it has been allowed the means, the restoring, building and archeological research of important Croatian cultural objects. The largest project undertaken by the BHZ, besides the restoration of Ozalj, was the building of the St. Cyril and Methodius Basilica in Duvno (today's Tomislavgrad), as a monument to the celebration of the millenary of the Croatian kingdom. Its construction, in 1925, made a large impression on Croatians both at home and abroad. (SOI : CSP: S. 40) + The BHZ ("Braca Hrvatskog Zmaja": "Brethrenhood of the Croatian Dragon") Society appeared on the Croatian cultural scene at the beginning of the twentieth century. Its objective was to protect monuments dedicated to important Croatian cultural figures and historical events, as well as to protect and restore artifacts of Croatian culture. But above all else, its main activity was the erection of monuments and memorial plaques. Even today, more than two hundred of these exist throughout Croatia, Bosnia-Hercegovina, and Austria. In Zagreb, the society founded the City Library in 1907 and the City museum in 1909. It also began a Popular University, founded the institute for conservation, the ethnographic museum, and supported the creation of a number of popular libraries in many Croatian cities. In particular, the Society supported and protected the monuments dedicated to the Zrinskis and Frankopans, old Croatian noble families who played a very important role in the political and cultural life of Croatia. In 1928, the Society was given the city of Ozalj to administer, where it then created the Zrinski-Frankopan museum. During the period of the Independent State of Croatia (1941-1945), the Society was transformed into the Knightly Order of the Croatian Dragon. In 1946, after the communists came to power, the Society was disbanded. When democracy was established in 1990, the Society was reconstituted