Suchergebnisse

This article examines the links between merit-based civil service, economic development and the robustnessof democracy. It also argues that patterns of public employment prevalent in the past, such as patronage(including political patronage) and venality of public offices, can no longer be followed if poverty is to bereduced, economic development sustained and democracy reinforced.

In many respects, Electronic Government (oreGovernment) is just a new name for theinformatisation of the public sector, which hasbeen going on for several decades now (Lenk1994; van de Donk and Snellen 1998). The useof IT in public administration and in otherbranches of government (including parliamentsand the judiciary) has attained a high level inmany countries of the industrialised world. Butthere was hardly any political interest in thisongoing and almost invisible process ofmodernising government. Especially New PublicManagement as the most important explicitmovement of government reform hardlyrecognised the enabling potential of IT for changingthe work practices and the business processesin the public sector. Its image of IT was one ofan auxiliary tool, to be used for supporting financialmanagement and statistical information.

Results of the research "Quality of communication between citizens and governance using the Internet" are analysedin detail and some comparisons are made on the bases of similar surveys conducted in other countries on a topic ofelectronic governance. Different information evaluation criteria were used in survey describing the communicationbetween citizens and every government institution's group (ministries, local authorities). Those criteria were set inaccordance with international and Lithuanian legal acts. Internet websites of Lithuanian governance institutions,communication between citizens and governance via e-mail was analysed in article too.

Italian government has demonstrated its sensitivity towards innovation by including amodernisation of the country public administration through the application of new ICT technologies amongits political programme priorities. In this article are discussed Italian strategies for the development of theInformation Society, giving especially attention to the development of e-Government and to the learning ofpublic servants, citizens and the general public.

The Lithuanian academic community groundlessly pays little attention to the State security policy, even thoughit was of considerable importance in Lithuania's joining to the NATO and EU. In autumn 2002 the efficiency of thepolicy was positively evaluated in the general context of the country and Lithuania eventually received an officialinvitation to join the structures.The article analyses the Lithuanian State security policy, its peculiarities, development from 1990 to 2002, aswell as provides suggestions for the development periods and gives prognosis on its development perspectives.

In this article the author aims to reveal the legal content of the Fundamental Freedoms enshrined in the ECTreaty, to analyze the relevant ECJ jurisprudence where the Fundamental Freedoms are interpreted in the directtax dimension and in such a way to emphasise the importance of the primary EC law to the individual incometaxation in the Member States.When analyzing the ECJ jurisprudence in the sphere of individual income taxation, the author notes that theMember States, being the source states for the taxpayers from other Member States, usually apply more favorabletax treatment to their residents than to non-residents. For the purposes of establishing the discrimination of a nonresidentin such a case, it shall be clarified whether such a non-resident is in the same situation with a resident. Inthis respect the ECJ distinguishes two types of national rules on individual income taxation: (i) the tax rules thatestablish the tax incentives pertaining to "personal and family circumstances" of a taxpayer and (ii) the tax rulesthat establish the tax incentives pertaining to the employment (business) income of a taxpayer.The author notes that a non-resident and a resident are treated as being in the same (comparable) situationwith respect to the tax incentive pertaining to "personal and family circumstances" if non-resident receives "all oralmost all" his income in the source state and therefore is not able to benefit from the personal and family related tax incentives applicable in his residence state. Such a resident is often called a "virtual" resident. Therefore, it isa source state, but not a residence state, that is obliged to apply the personal and family related tax incentives to sucha taxpayer. If the source state is applying the personal and family related tax incentives to its residents, however, itrefuses to apply such tax incentives to its "virtual" residents, then such a practice shall be treated as being discriminatory.The famous ECJ case Schumacker is a good illustration of such a situation.On the other ...

The aim of the EU regional policy is to increase the level of social and economic cohesion of the Community. The effectiveness of this policy is not unanimously agreed upon. There are regions in Europe which took maximum advantage of the Structural Funds and considerably decreased the gap between them and the average EU level (Lisboa e Vale Do Tejo), or even went beyond it (Ireland). However, there are also regions that, despite huge transfers from the EU budget, are stagnant (southern Italy) The negative examples are exploited by the opponents of the current policy. According to them, the policy's achievement in its current shape is too expensive for the entire Union (too high opportunity cost). The same transfers used to support innovativeness in the well-developed regions would lead to an increased innovativeness and modernization of the Member States' economies in general. The article's aim is an attempt to answer the question about the policy's future shape. It will depend on many factors (social and economic situation in the entire Europe, catch-up processes, political situation, etc). A different shape of regional policy could, however, mean a return to the idea of two-speed Europe, which would not be advantageous to the new Member States.

This paper seeks to conceptualise ethics leadership in English local government. It will demonstratethat there are a number of stakeholders within the ethical framework for English local government, all ofwhom have a potential leadership role to play. It will further argue that traditional models of ethical leadershipdo not fully encompass this diversity of leadership sources, which can be better addressed througha framework of collective decision making and collaborative action. In so doing, the paper will draw togetherethical leadership with other strands of public management leadership theory. After defining theconcept of ethical leadership, the paper will map out the ethics network in local government and will categorisestakeholders into different groups. The ethics map will then be discussed in terms of relational leadershipand communities of practice. It concludes by offering strategies for future research

The concept of state capture, which is widely used when speaking about corruption in transitional democracies,defines illegitimate and non-transparent influence on state policy development. Though widely-spread inLithuania, this phenomenon still has not been studied thoroughly by Lithuanian scholars. The phenomenon ofstate capture in Lithuania is analyzed in this article emphasizing three main aspects: its' prevalence, forms andreasons. After the short introduction on state capture the authors analyze this phenomenon using the Lithuaniancase study, which is based on the analyses of legal acts, other surveys, scientific papers, and the interview withrepresentatives of the Transparency International Lithuanian Chapter. The analysis showed that level of statecapture in Lithuania decreased during the period of 1999 – 2002 but increased in 2005; however, there are notenough data to confirm the latter conclusion. Institutions mostly affected by state capture are legislative (Seimas),executive (Government), judicial and political parties. Business enterprises, separate individuals and foreigncountries (especially Russia) sought to influence the formation of public policy in corrupt ways in Lithuania.

Article methodically analyses external and internal obstacles for further development of civil service inLithuania.Most important challenges are identified as the need for change of existing governance paradigm from administrativeto management, and this need is coming from dynamic changes in XXI century and society' s growingdemand for democratic governance. Second challenge is identified as narrowing professional specialisation ofpoliticians that raises the need for specific competency in political decision making.Second half of article identifies and analyses following essential internal challenges for civil service in Lithuania:value system that doesnot match management practice; mismatch between raised strategic goals and existinghuman capital; too strong juridical regulation of civil service; lack of leadership and management skills; poorlyorganized system for competency development and retention; poorly specialised employment system; limitedmaterial and immaterial opportunities to motivate employees.

Describing contemporary problems of coordinationbetween monetary and fiscal policy inthe European Union (the EU) as a whole and ineach particular member state it is easy to noticethat the monetary policy mechanisms are muchbetter protected from biases created by the politicalcycle. The implementation of the conceptof the central bank independence in various nationalmutations and the European Central Bankversion introduced more stability into the Europeanmonetary policy though it did not solvethe problem of transparency of that policy.

The behaviour of woven fabrics for military clothing was evaluated using punch loading investigations under theconditions similar to those during real garment wear; i.e. in which plane material sustains biaxial deformation. Duringthe experiment specially prepared specimens were loaded with the punch up to tearing. They were loaded also with thesame punch for sustained creep process. Creep tests were carried out with dry and wet specimens. Mechanical stabilityof textile materials was evaluated by relative values of creep test parameters. For the evaluation of these parameters thespecial test unit created at Kaunas University of Technology was used. The objects of the investigation were wovenfabrics from cotton – PES blended yarns, with camouflage printing typical for military clothing. Two samples of testedmaterials were water repellent. The water repellent treatment improved mechanical stability of textile material, so waterrepellent fabrics are in preference to outdoor training clothing.

Beyond any doubt, the division of tax charges should be just and, thus, the tax legislation, similarly asthe tax system, should be established so as to meet the standard of justice. However, the ethic standard ofjustice causes significant complications in the legislative practice. These mainly result from the fact thatthere is no confidence in the idea of just taxation. The reasons why the principle of just taxation cannot betrusted are different for the legislator and different for the taxpayer. The legislator's distrust stems, above all,from fear that it might not be possible to connect the just taxation with effectiveness in fulfilling the incomefunction. In the legislative practice a strong wrong belief continues to be shared that the just taxationamounts to the reducing of tax proceeds. Whereas the fear of the taxpayers that the system of tax chargesapplies to results from their awareness which has been developed and enhanced long enough to show thatthe legislator, while referring to the concept of justice, too often carries out reforms that contradict it. The taxjustice – as an argument underlying the structure of the tax system – is employed much too frequently tomask the fiscal interest of the State, that is the effective fulfillment of the income function. What is importantjust as well is the fact that the ethical postulate of just taxation can provide the legislator with groundsto formulate various courses of action and, as a result, various tax law solutions.There is a variety of tax rules that can be deemed to incorporate the postulate of justice [1]. However, amore complicated question arises whether the legislator can put the just taxation into practice by referring tothe idea of justice. This has always raised doubts [2].

The article analyses main features of processes of political/administrative decision initiation and evaluationin Lithuanian municipalities.Demand of development of decision-making process in municipalities was inspired by: a) decentralization;b) changes in the institutional structure of municipalities; c) economic/social partner and municipalitiescooperation in making important to communities municipal decisions. The most relevant areas of decision-making improvement are analyzed using methods of sociological survey and organizational structureanalyses. Results of the research shows that a great number of Lithuanian municipalities strives to ensurehigh quality of decision making and suggestion discussing. Nevertheless, it is very common for municipalitieswhile reacting to the problems to thrust decisions, to form the policy and make decisions instead ofarriving at consensus and decision planning.

The peculiarities of Lithuania's civil service during the first five years after Lithuania regained it'sindependence are analyzed in this article in the light of forming a model of civil service, management of thecivil service and teaching and improving the qualification of the workers. With reference to non-fiction and actsof law it has been shown, that during that period the evolution of the civil service was spontaneous and evenchaotic: loyalty for the nascent democracy had a big role during the first years of independence, hence thequalification and competence of the civil service were not premier; the establishment of the legal acts was late;too little attention was paid to improving the qualification of the officials of the civil service. The material inthe article shows that, except all the shown problems, the experience of that period made a background toforming the contemporary civil service of Lithuania.