Suchergebnisse

The article is an analysis of European Union legislation on conservation and protection of biodiversity. It emphasizes the achievements of the activity of the EU in this area, mainly the establishment of the Natura 2000 Network, examining the obligations of the Member States that are stipulated in the Birds and Habitats Directives. It points out to the integration of biodiversity protection in other fields of EU sectoral policies as well.

The erosion of media trust raises concerns about the ways in which the conduit of political information could undermine citizens' trust in democracy. While a large body of research in western democracies shows that media trust is contingent on specific media-system, political and cultural factors pertaining to national contexts, little is known about the sources of media trust in the new democracies from Central and Eastern Europe. Based on statistical analyses of public opinion surveys, this research tests if levels of trust in various traditional (television, radio, written press) and alternative mediums (Internet and online social networks) are differentiated along political party lines and depending on media consumption patterns in post-communist Romania. The results reveal a stronger association between trust in political parties and trust in traditional mediums, while trust in online media is more strongly linked to consumption patterns. These findings have practical, theoretical and normative implications for the functioning of democracy in post-communist societies.

Corruption manifests at an international, regional and national level, it can be considered a phenomenon of society that has a negative impact on the political, juridical, and economic system and the public services of a state. As a response to this phenomenon, the state develops anti-corruption instruments, which are: laws, normative acts, standards, political commitments, mandates for the creation of institutions and mechanisms, measures and actions against corruption. In this article are investigated anti-corruption instruments at international, regional, national, and local levels and institutional anti-corruption instruments. Moreover, it is analyzed the efficiency of anti-corruption instruments used by the National Anticorruption Center, an anti-corruption specialized institute. In conclusion, it is emphasized the importance of the realization of anti-corruption measures in Moldova, making use of international experience and developing national instruments, that correspond to the local specifics and conditions.

The European continent, under the urge of the events generated by the process of building Europe that has led to an enlargement of the external European Union borders towards the east, undergoes a process of alteration. No matter on which side of the EU border they may be, the citizens of the European countries are entitled to enjoy the fruit of welfare, security and freedom. The development of a coherent neighbourhood policy in Brussels becomes an imperative resulting from the need for communication and cooperation amongst people and countries.
No matter the view on the European Union external border, the dialogue on all levels of the society through the means of inter-university cooperation is a factor providing the communication needed for good neighbourhood. Thus, the stiff borders fade away. By setting up a university network comprising both partners from within and outside the European Union, a bond is established over the external border of the community. From this point of view, inter-university cooperation at the external borders of the European community turns into a promoter of good neighbourhood values.

The current financial and economic crisis has highlighted the inadequacy of existing institutional and policy arrangements at the EU level. Even before this crisis, the EU economic growth was low, by international standards, revealing deep structural problems across EU countries, especially in the Southern flank. Macroeconomic imbalances have been building up, exposing a stratified EU with divergences in productivity and competitiveness, with rigidity of labour markets, impeding efficient market responses to shocks. The Monetary Union does not have adequate institutional arrangements, which may help it manage a major crisis, such as that of a last-call borrower, depreciation and burden-sharing mechanisms of asymmetric shocks, etc; various sui generis formulas are now being tested. Fiscal reactions vary depending on the level of the debts and on the speed these accumulate; at the same time, these are linked to the size of the budgetary expenditure and fiscal revenues as percentage in the GDP. The sooner the growth picks up, the more acceptable is the downsizing of the certain expenditure and/or the rise of some taxes, so that the ratio between the public debt and the GDP stabilizes (reduces, when it is the case).

The paper analyzes the dynamics of electoral participation and its predictors in Romania, using both official data on turnout and post-electoral survey data. The turnout in the Romanian parliamentary elections has declined by over
50% in the last 20 years of democratic reconstruction. However, turnout decline is
unevenly distributed, being more dramatic in the last decade especially in the urban
areas as well as among younger cohorts of voters. The decline of turnout in parliamentary elections is also accompanied by a shift in the importance of the predictors of voting. The analyses of electoral participation and its predictors
suggest that voting in the Romanian parliamentary elections has become the attribute of a minority of citizens who still feel closer to a political party, are interested in politics, trust the political institutions and leaders, ideologically place themselves at the extremes of the left-right axis, and of those who are more exposed to mobilization attempts both because they live in smaller communities in the rural areas which are more easily controlled by local political leaders and because they are part of social networks that are influenced by political parties or politicians.
This is the "hard core" of a generally apathetic electorate which is unconfident in the efficacy of elections as a tool for producing social transformations, a public which is becoming less and less demanding with the politicians after the subsequent disappointments with the democratic governance after 1989.

Cinematography was deliberately organized, financed and oriented towards the purposes of the system and consequently became the most effective element of political and cultural pedagogy. The synchronic correlation between word and image, the power of visual suggestibility, empathy as an emotional response to the actors' performance - all these had immediate effects on the collective imaginary, on the perception of reality as a social and identity-forging project determined by the emergence of the ideological discourse. The Romanian socialist cinematography from the time of Ceauşescu synthesized and systemized a coherent and explicit system of values wherein it integrated the message of literary and other artistic works, of variegated forms of cultural expression, so that Romanian cultural axiology could find new possibilities to stand out in strict dependence to the institutional and optional structures of mass culture. The cinema per se thus became a sort of pedagogy for universal use, rendering the past heroic, as it exacerbated the national ego via the instruments of entertainment. Highly permeated ideologically and quasi entirely subordinated to the Communist cultural policies, the cinema production, carried out because of the appeal to emotions and collective memory, thus became part of the official discourse and orientated its issues, especially after the 11th Congress of RCP, according with the political and ideological interests of the national Communist project. The analysis focuses on the Romanian historical films with subjects and episodes relevant for the ancient and mediaeval history, in relation with the efforts of identity reconstruction, coordinated during the Communist regime in relationship with the project of the socialist nation's building and, after 1989, in relationship with the attempt of reconsolidating, sometimes from a radical perspective, the nationalist mythologies. Socialist patriotism thus incorporated many stereotypes drawn out from the ante-bellum, as well as from the inter-bellum Romanian spirit: the lyric of self-identification expressed by the film soundtrack and by the majestic character of the heroic gestures, the heroic epic obvious in the popular ballad pattern of pre-modern nature, the activist pedagogy specific to all forms of identitarianism. Despite all this ideological infusion, the mythology of Romanian historical films during the Communist nationalist times remains one of a sadistic-masochistic nature, cultivating the fear towards the Other, fatalism, expectation and obedience, all chronic and historicized.