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Peggy Alford, Executive Vice President, Global Sales, PayPal : "There is not one successful personality type. Try to become a better you, not someone else or someone that you're not." -- Keisha Lance Bottoms, 60th Mayor of Atlanta : "Follow your instincts-the first time." -- Samuel Bright, Chief Product Officer, Upwork : "You and I have a voice, we have real influence, right now." -- Laphonza Butler, President, EMILY's List : "Choose to understand before seeking to be understood." -- Veronica Chambers, Author and Editor, Narrative Projects, The New York Times : "Keep going, and make the journey as joyful as possible." -- Kenneth Chenault, Chairman and Managing Director, General Catalyst; Former Chairman and CEO, American Express : "In business and in life, surrounding yourself with a few trusted people just makes all the difference in the world." -- Arnold Donald, CEO, Carnival Corporation : "Anger distorts your reaction. Anger distracts you from your purpose." -- Thasunda Brown Duckett, President and CEO, Teacher's Insurance Annuity Association (TIAA) : "You rent your title, you own your character." -- Charles Harbison, Founder/Creative Director, HARBISON : "In life, as in fashion, it's not the predictable straight lines that make things interesting; it's the unexpected stitching that makes up the fabric of who we are." -- Carole Hopson, First Officer, United Airlines : "Dream every day. Then set a goal and get to work." -- Charles "Chaz" Howard, Vice President for Social Equity and Community and Chaplain, University of Pennsylvania : "We can journey with love through the crap and beautiful things can emerge from rocky soil." -- Tom Jones, Senior Partner, TWJ Capital LLC. : "Repeated success can be very heady, but it doesn't necessarily make you wise." -- Debra Lee, Corporate Board Director and Retired CEO, BET : "Do you. But also be open to evolution." -- Malcolm Lee, Writer, Director/Filmmaker : "Power is a good thing. But it means more work, and more expectations." -- Alprentice McCutchen, History Teacher, New Rochelle High School : "Just take one step at a time, do one thing at a time, don't stop. And you'll eventually rock it with distinction." -- Janai Nelson, President and Director-Counsel, Legal Defense Fund : "There may not be a blueprint for the time and space that you are about to enter. You will likely have to create one." -- Richard Parsons, Co-Founder and Partner, Imagination Capital : "The unanswered question is, are we gonna get it right this time, or are we just going to dance on the surface again?" -- Kahina Van Dyke, Global Head, Digital Channels & Client Data Analytics, Standard Chartered Bank : "Don't do things because they look good on paper. Do things because they inspire you to work when everybody else might be sleeping." -- Jason White, Chief Marketing Officer, MTV : "It's a defining truth: You can be anything you want."

Foreword : Falling in love with Jonnie Ray: sixty years of telling sexual stories / Ken Plummer -- Introduction / Thomas Waugh and Brandon Arroyo -- Part 1 : Scientia sexualis, Activism: The treachery of rape representation / Tal Kastner and Ummni Khan -- More than just selfies : #occupotty, affect, and confession as activism / Andie Shabbar -- Against authenticity : the feminist turn in N. Maxwell Lander's video work / Naomi De Szegheo-Lang with N. Maxwell Lander -- Blogging affects and others inheritances of feminist consciousness-raising / Ela Przybylo and Veronika Novoselova -- "Yes I'm Gay" : the mediality of coming out / Silke Jandl -- Author, subject, and audience: "Aren't you worried about what people might say? What people might do?" : Lady Gaga and the "heeling" of queer trauma / Jacob Evoy -- Letters to Nina Hartley : pornography, parrhesia, and sexual confessions / Ingrid Olson -- Femininities of excess : the cinematic confessions of Rituparno Ghosh / Shohini Ghosh -- The videomaker and the rent boy : gay-for-pay confessional in 101 Rent Boys and Broke Straight Boys TV / Nicholas De Villiers -- Confession : watching the masturbating boys (excerpts) / Intervals, an anonymous collective -- Part 2 : Ars Erotica, Pornographies : Life a prayer : confessing my beatific-cum-demonic visions of men (and God?) / Connor Steele -- Camming and erotic capital : the pornographic as an expression of neoliberalism / Éric Falardeau (translated by Jordan Arseneault) -- Confessions of a masked pornographer : reorienting gay male identity via bodily confession / Brandon Arroyo -- Sadean confessions in Virginie Despente's punk-porn-feminism / Valentina Denzel -- Fuck Yeah Levi Karter! and new authenticities / Daniel Laurin -- Circuitous pleasures, guilt, and pain : nymph()maniac and the pornographic hard code / Justine T. McLellan -- Porn fast / Shaka McGlotten -- Documentaries : "I confess : I was the firl in the shadows" / Rebecca Sullivan -- Queer auto-porn-art : genealogies, aesthetics, ethics, and desire / Thomas Waugh -- On not seeing all : The Incomplete, sexual play, and the ethics of the frame / Susanna Paasonen -- To queer things up : sexing the self in the queer documentary web series / Sarah E. S. Sinwell -- A man with a mother : Tarnation and the subject of confession / Damon R. Young -- Looking, stroking, and speaking : a queer ethics of MAP desire / Anonymous -- Playing confession : gaming, autobiography, and the elusive self / Stephen Charbonneau -- From a "disappeared aesthetics" to a "trans-aesthetics," and the elusive self / Milan Pribisic -- Writing intimacy : fantasy, new media, and confession in Marie Calloway's what purpose did I serve in your life / Eleanor Ty -- Hentai confessions : transgression and "sexual technologies of the self" in Akihiko Shiota's Moonlight Whispers / Ron S. Judy -- Porno-graphing : "dirtiness" and self-objectification / Annamaria Pinaka -- Shut me up in Grindr : anti-confessional discourse and sensual nonsense in MSM media / Tom Roach.

The first Iranian woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Ebadi tells her story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves. For years the Islamic Republic tried to intimidate Ebadi, but after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, the censorship and persecution intensified. The government wiretapped Ebadi's phones, bugged her law firm, sent spies to follow her, harassed her colleagues, detained her daughter, and arrested her sister on trumped-up charges. It shut down her lectures, fired up mobs to attack her home, seized her offices, and nailed a death threat to her front door. Despite finding herself living under circumstances reminiscent of a spy novel, nothing could keep Ebadi from speaking out and standing up for human dignity. But it was not until she received a phone call from her distraught husband--and he made a shocking confession that would all but destroy her family--that she realized what the intelligence apparatus was capable of to silence its critics. The Iranian government would end up taking everything from Shirin Ebadi--her marriage, friends, and colleagues, her home, her legal career, even her Nobel Prize--but the one thing it could never steal was her spirit to fight for justice and a better future. This is the amazing, at times harrowing, simply astonishing story of a woman who would never give up, no matter the risks. Just as her words and deeds have inspired a nation, Until We Are Free will inspire you to find the courage to stand up for your beliefs; advance praise for Until We Are Free: "Shirin Ebadi is quite simply the most vital voice for freedom and human rights in Iran"--Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Zealot : The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth; "A riveting account of a brave, lonely struggle. Reads like a police thriller, its drama heightened by Ebadi's determination to keep up the quotidian aspects of her family life"--The Washington Post Book World; "A must-read. may be the most important book you could read this year"--Seattle Post-Intelligencer; "As a testament to how a single, inspired voice can rise above the cacophony. The book should be required reading"--The Nation; "Some of her admirers in Iran call her a woman of steel. Sure, ...

"From #1 New York Times bestselling author Thomas E. Ricks, a dual biography of Winston Churchill and George Orwell, with a focus on the pivotal years from the mid-1930s through the 1940s, when their farsighted vision and inspired action in the face of the threat of fascism and communism helped preserve democracy for the world. Both George Orwell and Winston Churchill came close to death in the mid-1930's--Orwell shot in the neck in a trench line in the Spanish Civil War, and Churchill struck by a car in New York City. If they'd died then, history would scarcely remember them. At the time, Churchill was a politician on the outs, his loyalty to his class and party suspect. Orwell was a mildly successful novelist, to put it generously. No one would have predicted that by the end of the 20th century they would be considered two of the most important people in British history for having the vision and courage to campaign tirelessly, in words and in deeds, against the totalitarian threat from both the left and the right. Together, to an extent not sufficiently appreciated, they kept the West's compass set toward freedom as its due north. It's not easy to recall now how lonely a position both men once occupied. By the late 1930's, democracy was discredited in many circles, and authoritarian rulers were everywhere in the ascent. There were some who decried the scourge of communism, but saw in Hitler and Mussolini 'men we could do business with,' if not in fact saviors. And there were others who saw the Nazi and fascist threat as malign, but tended to view communism as the path to salvation. Churchill and Orwell, on the other hand, had the foresight to see clearly that the issue was human freedom--that whatever its coloration, a government that denied its people basic freedoms was a totalitarian menace and had to be resisted. In the end, Churchill and Orwell proved their age's necessary men. The glorious climax of Churchill and Orwell is the work they both did in the decade of the 1940'sto triumph over freedom's enemies. And though Churchill played the larger role in the defeat of Hitler and the Axis, Orwell's reckoning with the menace of authoritarian rule in Animal Farm and 1984 would define the stakes of the Cold War for its 50-year course, and continues to give inspiration to fighters for freedom to this day. Taken together, in Thomas E. Ricks's masterful hands, their lives are a beautiful testament to the power of moral conviction, and to the courage it can ...

Machine generated contents note: About the author -- About the contributors Introduction -- What is a digital strategy? -- What's the story of this book? -- How to get the most from this book 01 What is digital marketing? -- A history of digital marketing -- The 4 Ps of marketing -- Porter's five forces -- Brand or perceptual positioning map -- Customer lifetime value -- Segmentation -- Boston Consulting Group matrix -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 02 Aligning with your business strategy -- Customer centricity -- Business model -- Global strategy -- Brand -- Vision -- Culture -- Research and insight -- KPIs -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 03 Barriers and considerations -- Technology -- Skills -- Budget and resources -- Business priorities -- Regulation -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 04 Planning -- The planning process -- The phased approach -- Goals -- Objectives and strategies -- Action plans -- Controls -- People -- Budgeting and forecasting -- Summary -- Further reading 05 Search engine optimization -- A history of SEO -- Researching your SEO strategy -- Technical SEO -- Site structure -- Content -- Mobile -- Location -- Penalties -- Organizational structure and SEO -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 06 Paid search -- An introduction to paid search -- Setting up a campaign -- Measurement and optimization -- Advanced paid search -- Managing paid search campaigns - humans versus robots -- Summary -- Further reading 07 Display -- A brief history -- Programmatic advertising -- Types and formats of display advertising -- Ad servers and technological delivery -- Types of display campaign -- Planning and targeting display campaigns -- Display campaign measurement and attribution modelling -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 08 Social media -- History of social media -- Should I or shouldn't I? -- Customer service and reputation management -- The SEO angle -- Where to start? -- Types of social media -- Content -- Social advertising -- Measurement -- Summary -- References 09 User experience and transformation -- User experience (UX) -- Digital transformation -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 10 CRM and retention -- Defining CRM and retention -- Contact strategy -- Cross-selling and up-selling -- Predictive analytics -- CRM systems -- Social CRM (SCRM) -- Loyalty -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 11 True personalization -- What is personalization? -- Defining true personalization -- User-defined personalization -- Behavioural personalization -- Tactical personalization -- Single customer view -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 12 Customer service -- Customer service principles -- Channels -- Social customer service -- Measurement -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 13 Content strategy -- What is content marketing? -- What is content? -- What content types should you use? -- Why content marketing? -- People and process for creating content -- Distribution -- Measuring the value of content -- International content -- Audit checklist -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 14 Analytics and reporting -- The data landscape -- The reliability of data-based decisions -- What are analytics? -- Tools and technology -- Attribution modelling -- Reporting -- Summary -- Further reading -- References 15 Presenting your strategy -- Decision making -- Budget -- Key channel benefits -- How channels interact -- Website -- Further considerations -- Structuring your proposal -- Advocacy -- Summary -- Further reading -- References Bringing it all together -- Index

"The first Muslim woman to receive the Nobel Peace Prize, Shirin Ebadi has inspired millions around the globe through her work as a human rights lawyer defending women and children against a brutal regime in Iran. Now Ebadi tells her story of courage and defiance in the face of a government out to destroy her, her family, and her mission: to bring justice to the people and the country she loves. For years the Islamic Republic tried to intimidate Ebadi, but after Mahmoud Ahmadinejad rose to power in 2005, the censorship and persecution intensified. The government wiretapped Ebadi's phones, bugged her law firm, sent spies to follow her, harassed her colleagues, detained her daughter, and arrested her sister on trumped-up charges. It shut down her lectures, fired up mobs to attack her home, seized her offices, and nailed a death threat to her front door. Despite finding herself living under circumstances reminiscent of a spy novel, nothing could keep Ebadi from speaking out and standing up for human dignity. But it was not until she received a phone call from her distraught husband--and he made a shocking confession that would all but destroy her family--that she realized what the intelligence apparatus was capable of to silence its critics. The Iranian government would end up taking everything from Shirin Ebadi--her marriage, friends, and colleagues, her home, her legal career, even her Nobel Prize--but the one thing it could never steal was her spirit to fight for justice and a better future. This is the amazing, at times harrowing, simply astonishing story of a woman who would never give up, no matter the risks. Just as her words and deeds have inspired a nation, Until We Are Free will inspire you to find the courage to stand up for your beliefs; advance praise for Until We Are Free: "Shirin Ebadi is quite simply the most vital voice for freedom and human rights in Iran"--Reza Aslan, author of No god but God and Zealot : The Life and Times of Jesus of Nazareth; "A riveting account of a brave, lonely struggle. Reads like a police thriller, its drama heightened by Ebadi's determination to keep up the quotidian aspects of her family life"--The Washington Post Book World; "A must-read. may be the most important book you could read this year"--Seattle Post-Intelligencer; "As a testament to how a single, inspired voice can rise above the cacophony. The book should be required reading"--The Nation; "Some of her admirers in Iran call her a woman of steel. Sure, ...

""This book is a must-read for anyone concerned with voter fraud in twenty-first-century America. Lorraine C. Minnite defines voter fraud so as to allow the careful, systematic investigation of the subject she reports in this volume. I highly recommend it."---Chandler Davidson, editor, Minority Vote Dilution" ""This is the first systematic---and convincing---answer to the decade-long campaign by Republican ideologues, the Wall Street Journal, and, for a time, the U.S. Department of Justice to create what Lorraine C. Minnite rightly calls t̀he myth of voter fraud.' This myth feeds the ongoing partisan efforts in states throughout the country to adopt v̀oter identification' laws, which have the effect of disproportionately disenfranchising minorities and the aged. Minnite's gracefully written book, brimming with fascinating stories and trenchant analysis, provides a clear-eyed, factual background for this major public policy debate. If you want to go beyond slogans and fantasies on voter fraud, this is the place to start."---J. Morgan Kausser. author of Colorblind Injustice: Minority Voting Rights and the Undoing of the Second Reconstruction" "Allegations that Widespread Voter Fraud is threatening to the integrity of American elections and American democracy itself have intensified since the disputed 2000 presidential election. The claim that elections are being stolen by illegal immigrants and unscrupulous voter registration activists and vote buyers has been used to persuade the public that voter malfeasance is of greater concern than structural inequities in the ways votes are gathered and tallied, justifying ever tighter restrictions on access to the polls. Yet, that claim is a myth." "In The Myth of Voter Fraud, Lorraine C. Minnite presents the results of her meticulous search for evidence of voter fraud. She concludes that while voting irregularities produced by the fragmented and complex nature of the electoral process in the United States are common, incidents of deliberate voter fraud are actually quite rare. Based on painstaking research aggregating and sifting through data from a variety of sources, including public records requests to all fifty state governments and the U.S. Department of Justice, Minnite contends that voter fraud is in reality a politically constructed myth intended to further complicate the voting process and reduce voter turnout. She refutes several high-profile charges of alleged voter fraud, such as the assertion that eight of the 9/11 hijackers were registered to vote, and makes the question of voter fraud more precise by distinguishing fraud from the manifold ways in which electoral democracy can be distorted. Effectively disentangling misunderstandings and deliberate distortions from reality, The Myth of Voter Fraud provides rigorous empirical evidence for those fighting to make the electoral process more efficient, more equitable, and more democratic."--BOOK JACKET

Our age has confronted no greater ethical, political and institutional challenge than ensuring the protection of civilians, as victims of both war and of mass atrocity crimes. Awareness of the problem of civilian protection is growing and has been accompanied by a much greater evident willingness -- at least in principle -- to do something about it. New paradigms for a new century Two normative advances in this area are, first, the dramatically upgraded attention given since 1999 to the law and practice relating to the protection of civilians (POC) in armed conflict; and, second, the emergence in 2001, and far-reaching global embrace since 2005, of the concept of the responsibility to protect (R2P). There is now more or less universal acceptance of the principles that state sovereignty is not a licence to kill but entails a responsibility not to do or allow grievous harm to one's own people. The international community also bears a responsibility to assist those states that need and want help in meeting that obligation, and a responsibility to take timely and decisive collective action in accordance with the UN Charter. Libya and its aftermath UN Security Council Resolution 1973, authorizing military intervention in Libya to halt what was seen as an imminent massacre, was a resounding demonstration of these principles at work, and seemed to set a new benchmark against which all future arguments for such intervention might be measured. However, the subsequent implementation of that mandate led to the reappearance of significant geopolitical divisions. The Security Council's paralysis over Syria during the course of 2011, culminating in the veto by Russia and China of a cautiously drafted condemnatory resolution, has raised the question, in relation to the sharp-end implementation of R2P, of whether Resolution 1973 would prove to be the high-water mark from which the tide will now retreat. The future for civilian protection The crucial question is whether the new geopolitics of intervention that appeared to have emerged with Resolution 1973 is in fact sustainable, or whether, as suggested by the subsequent response to the situation in Syria, a more familiar, and more cynical, geopolitics will in fact reassert itself. This author takes the optimistic view that the new normative commitment to civilian protection is alive and well, and that, in the aftermath of the intervention in Libya, the world has been witnessing not so much a major setback for a new cooperative approach as the inevitable teething troubles associated with the evolution of any major new international norm. The Brazilian 'responsibility while protecting' initiative, focusing on clearer criteria for and more effective monitoring of the use of force, offers a constructive way forward. Adapted from the source document.

The article discusses the problem that was recently raised in Lithuanian historical literature and public discourse by G. Beresnevicius, A. Bumblauskas, S.C. Rowell: was the medieval Lithuanian state (Grand Duchy of Lithuania; GDL) an empire? Traditional historiography did not use concepts of "empire" and "imperialism" in the work on GDL. For Non-Marxist Russian historians, GDL was simply another Russian state, so there could not be Russian imperialism against Russians. For Marxist historians, imperialism was a phase in the "capitalist formation," immediately preceding the socialist revolution and bound to the specific period of world history, so the research on precapitalist empires and imperialism was suspect of anachronism. For the opposite reason, deriving from the hermeneutic methodology, the talk about how the medieval Lithuanian empire and imperialism was an anachronism for Non-Marxist Polish and German historians too, because they considered as Empires only polities that claimed to be successors to Roman Empire. However, the Lithuanian political elite never raised such claims, although theory of the Lithuanian descent from Romans (Legend of Palemon) could be used for this goal. Using the recent work in comparative historical sociology of empires by S.N. Eisenstadt, I. Wallerstein, A. Motyl, B. Buzan, R. Little, A. Watson, M. Beissinger, Ch. Tilly, Th.J. Barfield and M. Doyle, the author argues that GDL was an empire because it was (1) the greatest state in Europe in the late 14-early 15th century, (2) militarily expansive in all directions if not held in check by superior military power, (3) displayed the territorial structure characteristic for empires, consisting of metropole and periphery, (4) had an informal empire and sphere of hegemony, (5) established imperial "Pax Lituanica" on broad territories securing long-distance trade roads. Typologically, it was a patrimonial empire, typologically distinct from the "barbarian kingdoms" created by ancient Germans and Vikings. After the internal crisis in 1432-1440 that is interpreted as "Augustan threshold" (in M. Doyle's sense), the Lithuanian empire evolved into a federal state by the early 16th century. Drawing on the distinction between "primary empires" and "shadow empires" proposed by Th.J. Barfield, GDL is classified as subtype of "shadow empires," called "vulture empires." GDL started as a "vulture empire," using for its expansion a geopolitical situation created by the decline of the Mongol empire and aspiring to unite under its power all lands of the former Kiev Russia. The most important outcome of the failure of the Lithuanian imperial project is the emergence of the three different Eastern Slave peoples (Belorussian, Ukrainian, Great Russian), while the probable outcome of its success would be the continuation of the undivided old Russian ethnicity. Adapted from the source document.

A review essay on books by (1) Korwa Gombe Adar & Rok Ajulu (Eds), Globalization and Emerging Trends in African States' Foreign Policymaking Processes: A Comparative Perspective of Southern Africa (London: Ashgate, 2002); (2) Patrick Bond, Against Global Apartheid: South Africa Meets the World Bank, IMF and International Finance (Cape Town, South Africa: U Cape Town Press, 2001); (3) Greg Mills, The Wired World: South Africa, Foreign Policy and Globalization (Cape Town, South Africa: Tafelberg for the South African Institute for International Affairs, 2000); (4) Philip Nel, Ian Taylor, & Janis Van Der Westhuizen (Eds), South Africa's Multilateral Diplomacy and Global Change: The Limits of Reformism (London: Ashgate, 2001); & (5) Ian Taylor, Stuck in Middle GEAR: South Africa's Post-Apartheid Foreign Relations (London: Praeger, 2001). The author makes the point that much writing about South Africa is still couched in an outdated theoretical framework, as reflected in these books, & the point that a single "homogenizing idea can set the limits of scholarly imagination" -- in this case, globalization. Mills, who is decidedly pro-globalization, is said to use a narrow conceptual range in discussing South Africa within that context. Further, his book is said to be little more than an updating of his "earlier polemic." Bond has an opposite perspective, as he believes that the dispossessed are agents for social change, & that globalization "brazenly contradicts society's strong motivation for more equitable development to redress the massive disparities of apartheid." Adair & Ajulu's book explores the creation of foreign policy, in different African states, in the context of the effects of globalization. The coverage is reportedly uneven, & there is no chapter on Tanzania, which was so active in the liberation movement. The essays edited by Nel et al explore multilateralism as the focus of foreign policy in post-apartheid South Africa. The editors make the point that South Africa has used its high profile to affect multilateral institutions on behalf of more vulnerable countries in areas such as environmental diplomacy, human rights, debt relief, the reform of international trade, & the global campaign to ban land mines. Taylor explains why the new South Africa has embraced globalization but focuses particularly on why multilateralism is embraced so enthusiastically. He demonstrates the emergence of a neoliberal policy, GEAR (for Growth & Economic Recovery Programme), & asks who is benefiting from South Africa's foreign policy, in a work of "genuine contemporary scholarship." These books are said to represent South Africa's unhappy past, & the reviewer also offers comments about works by Rodney Davenport & Christopher Saunders, Jacqueline A. Kalley, Steven D. Gish, Thomas Koelbe, & A. J. Christopher, which are said to represent more conceptual daring. M. S. Northcutt

There is substantive interest in politics and public life. People are well informed but they receive their information in most cases from the electronic mass media, state televison and local radio stations. The positive level of interest is not translated into their political efficacy. A strong majority of the people think that they have no influence on the local or national government. Elections are the major form of collective political participation. In Croatia they had additional importance as the instrument of democratic change. In general electoral participation the turnout is getting smaller. Citizens prefer to observe and vote and are not willing to take part in party campaign activities. Croatian citizens see their problems in the economic area, income, standard of living, unemployment, etc. Political issues are not their priorities. They see the strength of the countr in the people and natural resources, combined with the national values and the independent state. + The author presents the basic findings of the survey on political participation in Croatia. Data presented indicate that Croatian citizens still have rather satisfactory level of political interest and that they do follow the political information in the mass media, specifically on television. On the other hand, they express low levels of political efficacy and believe that there is very little that can be changed by political participation and activism. The formal forms of political participation, like voting, also show the declining rates. Levels of non-satisfaction with the quality of democratic life are high. Major problems in the country are perceived as economic and major strengths are seen in the natural resources and potential of the people. + The areas of possible intervention by strengthening participation and community efforts are human rights and local democracy in general. In these areas there are basic positive conditions for improvement and change in the desired direction. One of the major obstacles to participation is seen by the people in the lack of resources, skills, information, time, and money. Investment in democratic capacity and potential will influence those areas in which citizens today see a limited space for influence (the areas under the strong state regulation). Participation is not only the instrument of democratic change but also has value in itself, and this can have many other positive and unexpected consequences. As an additional form of conclusion I have created the "public participation index" from four data sets: general interest, perception of influence, perception of possible change by political participation and motivation to participate in election campaigns. Used in future surveys it can show the basic trends in the Croatian democratic life. (SOI : PM: S. 10; 22f.)

The quinquennial Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) Review Conference represents a highly important event from the perspective of the EU Common Foreign and Security Policy (CFSP). Though not a party to the treaty itself, the EU has made a consistent effort since the 1990s to coordinate the positions of its member states and achieve higher visibility in the NPT review process. The aim of this article is to examine the role of the EU in the 2015 NPT Review Conference deliberations. Drawing on on-site observations, statements and in-depth research interviews, it argues that the recent institutional changes notwithstanding, the influence of the EU as a distinct actor in the NPT context remains very limited, and the EU's common position is in bigger disarray than ever before. This year's Review Conference demonstrated the widening rift between the member states, in particular in the area of nuclear disarmament and the related issues. The inability to maintain a coherent common position limits the EU 'actorness' and impedes its striving for relevance in the NPT forums. The dynamics outlined in this article further highlight the limits of the EU CFSP in security matters in which the national positions of individual member states are as divergent as in the case of nuclear disarmament. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)