Suchergebnisse

"Direct Democracy and Political Decision Making" published on by Oxford University Press.

"Levels of political involvement still are surprisingly different among European citizenries. Apparently, neither the establishment of democratic institutions nor the rise in competences among mass publics has lead to a convergence of the levels of political involvement. Only at a very general level, systemic differences can be noted between the settled democracies of North-western Europe and the newer democracies of Southern Europe. The analyses presented here examine several explanations of the cross-national differences in political involvement by developing multi-level models combining the impact of various factors at the individual and the macro level using the first wave of the European Social Survey (2002-2003) as the primary data source. The results show that of the social capital factors, only the support for norms and values contributes to the explanation of political involvement after the conventional antecedents at the individual level are taken into account. Neither social capital understood as an individual resource, nor social capital understood as a conditional effect at the macro level, appears to be very relevant for the explanation of differences in political involvement. Instead, the multi-level models tested here underline the relevance of conventional individual-level factors. Cross-national differences in political involvement are mainly due to differences in the distributions of these factors in the various countries." (author's abstract)

Multilingualism, one of the major problems in the new reality, is considered to be of crucial importance for the European Union, as multilingualism can be identified as the phenomenon leading to the cultural diversity and protects the disappearance of certain languages, mostly regional and minority languages.
The treaties and the decrees within the European Union aim at preservation of cultural and linguistic identities of every country. At the same time, the European Union gives the right to every citizen to have the dialogues with the European institutions in his own language. But, in practice, the things are not like in theory. So, we come across the questions: it is really possible to preserve the linguistic identity within the European Union environment? Or, is the application of multilingualism still a problem without solution?
Even if the European Union tries to preserve the multilingual reality, from the practical point of view the reality is considered to be much more complicated. In this case, the multilingualism, within the European Union, is the problem still expecting solutions.

Die Verfasserin stellt das Bundesmodellprogramm "Erfahrungswissen für Initiativen" vor, dessen Ziel es war, das Erfahrungswissen älterer Menschen durch die Ausbildung sogenannter seniorTrainerInnen für Initiativen, Vereine und Einrichtungen in unterschiedlichen gesellschaftlichen Bereichen zu aktivieren und nutzbar zu machen. Das Rollenmodell "seniorTrainerIn" stellt ein Angebot zur Rollenfindung für Ältere dar, das den besonderen biographischen Erfahrungen der neuen Altengeneration Rechnung trägt. Die Konzeption zur Nutzung des Erfahrungswissens Älterer umfasst vier Kernelemente: eine Anlaufstelle für bürgerschaftliches Engagement, eine Bildungseinrichtung, eine seniorKompetenzteam und die seniorTrainerInnen. Die seniorTrainerInnen verstehen sich als Unterstützer und Berater, Initiatoren neuer Projekte, Vernetzer im Gemeinwesen sowie Moderatoren und Koordinatoren. Bundesweit sind ca. 1000 seniorTrainerInnen aktiv. Die Gründung des Vereins "EFI Deutschland e.V." verstetigte die Arbeit des Modellprogramms in Deutschland; auf europäischer Ebene gibt es ähnliche Projekte wie beispielsweise das EU-Projekt "Lifelong Learning and Active Citizenship in Europe's Ageing Society (LACE)". (ICE2)