Suchergebnisse

Ilja Luciak, professor and chair of the Department of Political Science in Virginia Tech's College of Liberal Arts and Human Sciences, recently completed a multi-year study on "Gender Equality and Democratization in Central America and Cuba" for the European Commission.

This report is categorized into three categories: (I) Introduction, (II) Key Issue and (III) Congressional Action. It also consist a figure for F-22A Weapons Loadout.

Citizen participation topic became actual in various European Union (EU) projects since 6-7th decade of the XX century, when in many countries it had been started to transfer authority power from centre to regional and local government authorities with intention to make closer decision-making and implementation to the people. It is considered that decentralization can assure management, which would be more public, participatory, cooperative with community, reactive and accountable. Regional level is very suitable for promotion of citizen participation ideas, because regional and local management is closest to the people. Therefore EU regional policy is inseparable from enhancement and development of democracy, in order to achieve social welfare of population, economy strengthening and to reduce the differences between the EU regions. Nowadays tendencies in public administration indicate that a good management is defi nable by categories of wider citizen participation, pluralism, subsidiarity, transparency, accountability, accessibility, cooperation and effi ciency. "Old democracy" states try to consolidate values of democracy and at the same time to adjust effective methods of new public management, new public administration or new civil service into the management of public organisations. The main scientifi c problem in respect of looking for effective management model is to fi nd a suitable form, how to apply effective management principles from private organisations in the management of public organisations and to secure democratic principles at once. The success and effectiveness of new management systems much depends on the legal basis and the specifi c management and administration traditions of concrete state. The aim of this article is to evaluate the opportunities of citizen participation in regional management, considering the EU guidelines in respect of regional policy. The article analyses citizen participation tendencies in management of public organizations, EU position with regard to regional policy ...

Competitive contracting is the most common form of municipal privatization and has been growing in USAsince the 1970s regardless of the political affiliation of elected officials. Between 1982 and 1992 contractingincreased by 121 percent in the 596 cities where comparable data were available. The average common municipalservice is contracted out by 27 percent of cities.Cities privatize first to save money and second to improve services. A summary of nine major, comprehensivestudies covering every contract entered into by the reporting jurisdictions – 7, 168 contracts in all – showed averagesavings of 29,5 percent.Mayor Stephen Goldsmith gained national and international attention for his successful efforts in Indianapolis.He used public-private competition to bring about large improvements in street repairs, wastewater treatment,fleet management, solid-waste collection, airport management, golf courses. All in all he put eighty-six services outto bid, of which city employees won 43 percent – but only by drastically improving their productivity. The numberof employees declined by a third but no union member lost a job, and the city projected cumulative savings of $450million.

This article focuses, first, on the moral legitimacy, leadership, and capacity of public service, and theirpotential role in considerations of ethics in international relations, in general, and corruption, in particular.Second, arguing that realpolitik has attenuated our analysis of corruption and our ability to oppose iton moral grounds, a case is made for linking the scholarly work on corruption and the scholarly work onmorality in international relations, in order to enrich our understanding of corruption as a key moral concernof global governance, and to enable us, as well, to design and deliver effective anti-corruption initiativesacross the globe. Finally, the article concludes with a call for morally independent and resilient publicadministrators as key players in competent states, as well as collaboration between practitioners andscholars in the development of new skills and strategies to advance democratic discourse and decisionmaking at all levels of governance.

The article analyses changes of EU structural policy in the new programming period of 2007 – 2013. In thebeginning of the article the evaluation of EU structural policy is made, which allows to formulate the main principlesof structural policy. Subsequent reconstruction of financial instruments of structural policy is analysed, and attentionis paid to the fact that from 2007 only two structural funds formally remain. Combined with financial instruments forstructural policy there are three funds in total. Also in the article an analysis of new objectives of structural policyis made. Legal bases for European territorialcooperationgrouping is also analyzed. Finally, the article affirms thatstructural policy develops to cohesion policy.

This paper aims at analysing the role of central banks in enhancing smooth operation of payment systems towards an integrated EU fi nancial infrastructure. The research is based on a number of views regarding the signifi cance of payment systems for the implementation of the central bank's monetary policy and improvement of the fi nancial market development process. The novelty of this research is the assessment of the launch of TARGET2 in the EU countries, including Latvia. Regarding TARGET2-Latvija, the authors have evaluated its objectives, tasks, legal framework and launching within the fi rst wave of migration to TARGET2, and have conducted the analysis of indicators determining the operation of payment systems. In the context of large value euro payments, the single shared technical platform, uniform legal framework and similar services across the EU are the advantages of TARGET2. Smooth integration into TARGET2 is the basic condition for the convergence of EU12 with the euro area countries in the payment system area.

The aim of the paper is to compare civil servants' motivation in countries having different civil servicemodel. The article starts with a short introduction of factors motivating civil servants. Later on differences betweencareer-based and post models are explored, paying special attention towards motivational factors. Datafrom civil servant's motivational survey conducted in Lithuania 2007 allows the comparison with data formother countries. Comparative analysis proves that civil servants despite different level of economical developmentand civil service model are motivated and demotivated by rather similar factors. Among the motivatorsare salary, job security and social guarantees. Too much rules and regulations, bad leadership, political pressureshave a negative impact on their motivation.