Suchergebnisse

At the end of the Second World War, on the Romanian Communist Party's agenda two major points were highlighted: massive industrialization and the recruitment of party members. The article explores the role and functions of the socialist enterprise in communist Romania, a place where the interaction between party and society was strongly emphasized. Focusing on the first two decades of communist rule, I have chosen as a case study an enterprise with an old tradition, created at the end of the XIXth century: The Hunedoara Integrated Iron and Steel Works. In the confined space of the socialist enterprise the political, economical and social objectives of the communist regime were put in practice. In this context, the socialist enterprise became one of the most important places of propaganda, domination and control.

The article explores the way political participation, representation and governance
are conceptualized and rationalized by the Romanian legislation on parties. The
plurality of parties was initially set up as a way to discipline and organize the
political pluralism manifest in society in order to contain it within the boundaries
imposed by the Constitution. This disciplinary vocation of parties was confirmed
and reinforced by the laws enacted in 1996 and 2003 that embedded parties into
a functional vision of democracy where they were explicitly endowed with
the public mission of ensuring the political integration of Romanian citizens.
The detailed rationalization of parties' mission to organize citizens' political
participation and to contain the expression of their political will contrasted
sharply with both the ambiguity of their governmental role within the "eclectic"
institutional design of the Constitution, and with their organizational friability.

In this paper, we analyze the role and functions of the socialist enterprise, a place in which the interaction between power and society is strongly emphasized. Focusing on the last decade of communist rule, we have chosen as a case study an enterprise created in the late 70's: the Călăraşi Integrated Iron and Steel Works. We were interested in how the Romanian Communist Party was organized inside the enterprise and the duties of party organizations. Recruiting new party members, mobilizing workers were only two of the party organizations tasks within enterprises. These topics were, in many occasions, the focus points of the Party organizations reports. An important part of this study was devoted to activities organized within the socialist enterprise. Socialist emulation, cultural and artistic activities, sports occupied a central place in everyday life of the industrial workers. Especially in the last decade of communist domination, any event is a cause for celebration, this phenomenon being in contrast to the austerity imposed by the regime. In communist Romania, the socialist enterprise was, above all, one of the most important places of propaganda, domination and control.

This study aims to answer the question whether Christian Orthodoxy can inspire political movements. In so doing we start from the political theories of modernity where the link between Christianity and democracy is central. Our result sounds unexpected: interaction between Orthodoxy and democracy seems to not have a perspective. It is too late for it since most political movements in post-communism do not have the religious identity of their members as criterion. The situation was not different before. As an example the effort of the orthodox theologians and laymen in Romania before the outbreak of the Second World War is quoted here. Almost without an exception all focused and restricted their interest on the question of the nation. Therein we see the principal reason for the above postulated perspective of an orthodox political doctrine until now. On the European level the situation looks also no better. Even the parties, which attribute themselves the Christian values, have at present large difficulties to convey their message. It remains only to hope that the political actors rediscover the social and actively support the Christian ethics in the public area. Only so can democracy be regarded as one of the most important binding forces also under the Christians.

An insightful look through the history of punishment and prisons offers a new perspective on the changes that have been undergone or would occur in the Romanian penitentiary system. In the last instance the Romanian punishment and prisons have not displayed the same functions from their origin till now. The study of documents, old chronics and writings of various historians unveil huge differences in thinking the punishment and the role of prison in different historic ages. There were times when the prisons were situated either in the center of society (in country's Principe or boyars' courts) or times when they were placed at society's periphery. The execution was public or hidden. A trip in the history of the Romanian detention system opens a wide window toward the future of this social system.

The Church-State relationships in EU Member States are in a process of a radical transformation. This is the result of a rapid political integration and also of the major transformations of the modernity. Religion is still part of the European public space even if, according to modernity premises, it should be only a private matter. According to Max Weber and other authors, secularization diminishes the role of the religion in society. However, these theories are being contested in recent years, due to the interpretation of statistical data and to the emergence of fundamentalist religious movements spreading around the world. Consequently, secularization is a tendency and not an "iron law". As regards the current role of the religion, Silvio Ferrari developed the theory according to which there is a common European model. This model does not exist yet, but certainly we live in an era defined by the continuous searching of such a model. There is no European identity without common values. Some of these values, like toleration, do have a profound religious foundation. European integration is based on the action of different actors, including interest groups located in Brussels. The Churches and the religious organizations are also part of this category of actors and they try to be part of a process by which a common space for consultation will emerge.

The international academic community is currently exploring the development of the intelligence studies domain as a social science project. The current position paper argues for a project to connect, in content terms, the Romanian political science with the domain of intelligence studies. It takes into account the international and local context, and presents some of the benefits to be generated by the intersection of these two domains.

Pierre Manent is viewed as a French thinker that develops in modern times the liberal tradition of political thinking. One of the most important issues of Manent's thinking that was not enough underlined it is the relationship between religion an politics and how this evolved from the beginning of Christianity until the main consequences of modernity. Manent view on religion and politics is the core of this paper analysis. The main contributions of Manent, such as Naissances de la politique moderne. Machiavel, Hobbes, Rousseau (1977), Histoire intellectuelle du lib.ralisme (1987) La cit. de l'homme (1994), Cours familier de philosophie politique (2001), La raison des nations. R.flections sur la d.mocratie en Europe (2006) are analyzed from this perspective. Our conclusion is that in the way Manent deals with the relationship between politics and religion there are some constants that may be found in all his work. These are: the relationship between the Church and the different forms of political organization in Europe (Civitas, Imperium, monarchy); the fact that Christianity is one of the few current relevant concepts for political, due to the failure of totalitarian ideologies; the idea that secularization in Europe is not irreversible; we live in "an age of separations", and Church-State is one of these separations; we witness the religion transformation process and the .tat la.que cannot survive to .tat-nation; the role of Islam in modern societies and his perpetual finding of a political form; the relationship between Judaism, state and nation; the issue of the Christian identity of Europe.

Drawing upon the first Romanian journal devoted to the broad promotion of hygiene and health education -The Sanitary and Hygiene Handbook- the article investigates the interaction between politics and medicine, politicians and doctors in modern Romania. Published uninterruptedly between 1899-1907 and considered "essential for the rural sanitary service", the journal shows the evolution and predicaments of the position of the medical profession: as public servants, the physicians were agents of the various territorial sanitary administrations; however, by virtue of their medical expertise and field experience, they were also harsh critics of local and central authorities, claiming a special status in both the design of health policies and their implementation on the ground. This dual and conflictive nature of the medical profession added to the increasing polarisation of the medical profession and of the sanitary staff as a result of the salient "proletarization" of its members in the rural areas, as opposed to the elitist character of the corporation in the capital, well represented among MPs. At the beginning of the 20th century, the debates hosted by the journal testify for the transformation of hygiene and medicine from a doctor-to-patient relation to a generally acknowledged policy sector.

Cultural heritage represents an essential component of human identity, and as a part of of the contemporary world, it has both symbolic and economic value. Cultural heritage is finite and non-renewable though, being endangered due to recent conflicts and due to the way it is perceived. This article analyses how different political regimes have influenced the way Iraqi and Syrian cultural heritage has been perceived, preserved, protected and even destroyed, starting with internal laws, institutions responsible of heritage administration and the people who led them, in the attempt of demonstrating that continuous attempt to impose a cultural unity can have unwanted consequences.

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.