Suchergebnisse

The author deals with the background & the types of human rights in the era of globalization & looks into the proposals of their global institutionalization. His assumption is that the increased legal normatization of global legal regimes on the basis of human rights is in the rational interest of the actors of global law. There are five main ideas: the democratization of all states, the global institutionalization of the direct global civil law, the global federal republic, the international legal solutions &, the global law. The global institutionalization of human rights has been beset by various problems & it requires different approaches which should be seen as mutually corrective. The globally oriented weak publics are a kind of a forum in which individual solutions' relevance must be argued. They affect the globally operating strong publics. The author concludes that the demand for global justice remains a normative measure towards which public education & the public will must be oriented for the sake of the legal formulation of human rights. 45 References. Adapted from the source document.

The author looks at the development & significance of the modern constitution. According to him, except for institutionalization of politics, the modern constitution affirms the goals of the political order. Constitutional concerns dwell mostly on the valorization of human rights, a commitment to democracy, & the legal & social state. The modern constitution remains the object of constitutional studies, & precedes the establishment of other forms of law. At its foundations, the modern constitution represents a political union, demarcating a political regime, & citizens remain free to pursue their own interests in social, economic, & political spheres. The two underlying conceptions of the constitution are distinct: on one hand, Thomas Paine established the philosophical underpinnings of the American-European constitutional order (rational & voluntary); on the other hand, the English model licenses constitutional rights in the institutions. Relativized are the differences between the two visions: the instrumental & symbolic functions of the constitution. The former is the outcome of political processes that specify laws & establish limits to political power. The latter is a symbolic function of a good & just society. It is concluded that the constitution requires responsible citizens, & that its symbolic functions emerge over time. A. Siegel

Addresses some institutional & structural elements of the emerging European post-Cold War security environment. In the early 1990s, at the level of institutionalization of European security, a plethora of institutions came into being whose purpose has been to gradually incorporate the former communist states into an integral security structure. Also, international security was formalized in international organizations covering Europe. Thus, one of the key challenges to the European security system has been the need for melding its central components into a consistent system. The author also describes some current processes & developments within the European security setting that will shape the European security structure in the future as well. This setting has been, & will undoubtedly continue to be, affected by various international (regional & global) & national factors in the European economic, political, & security space as well as by the joint efforts of European states (their leaders) & international security organizations to provide common security in Europe. The author concludes that the European international system today includes many organizations & institutions that, with an appropriate division of labor & cooperation, may help set up a common & integral European security system that would efficiently ensure the security of individual states as well as of Europe as a whole. 1 Figure. Adapted from the source document.

The studies of the third wave of democratization have shown the necessity for a more precise differentiation of forms of democracy, since the definition of democracy exclusively on the basis of pluralist elections has proved lacking. The author also thinks that the instruments of quantitative evaluation of democracies (e.g. the very popular Freedom House index) are not sufficient, primarily because the quantification is not theoretically sound enough & includes a huge dose of arbitrariness. Contrary to this, the author spells Out his concept of embedded & defective democracy. Starting from the terminological suggestion by Philippe Schmitter & the systemic-theoretical description of Niklas Luhmann's intrasystemic communication, the functionally embedded democracy can be defined as a relationship of interdependence & mutual support of five partial regimes of democracy: electoral regime, political freedoms, civil rights, horizontal accountability & the real governing power. Apart from these five partial regimes, whose stable interrelationship is a prerequisite for the internal embeddedness of democracy, there are some external democracy-fostering conditions: the high level of socio-economic development, the integration into the democratically-oriented international economic & political alliances & the vital civil society. The author puts particular emphasis on the importance of the latter since it is not a part of the democratic political system but a way of organizing a non-state sphere of individual & group activity for the protection of individual rights, safeguarding the rule of law, the political socialization & the institutionalization of the public as the medium of democratic self-reflexion. & finally, the main types of defective democracy are outlined -- the exclusive, the domain, the nonliberal & the delegative -- as well as the key reasons underlying these deficits. 3 Tables, 1 Figure, 60 References. Adapted from the source document.

The relationship between democracy & human rights is twofold: on the one hand, the demand for democracy historically emerged as a result of increased individual rights -- & the democratic regimes were instituted as a guarantor of the protection of human rights. On the other hand, there is a tension between them, since within the democratic state human rights must be protected from the will of the majority. The author examines the complex relationship between democracy & human rights from three perspectives. First, he examines the connection between the right to political participation & the idea of human rights. This connection was unequivocally established only in the 20th century in the way that the right to the freedom of conscience was interpreted as the right to taking part in the political communication process that shapes a community's self-definition. However, whereas the right to democratic participation is morally undeniably founded, its concrete institutionalization is faced with numerous dilemmas & challenges. The author further analyzes the controversy between the liberal & the republican understanding of democracy & human rights. Liberals claim that the foundation of human rights in the law of nature requires universal respect, & that democracy is a rather challenging political regime that may be established in some societies only if some preconditions are already in place. Contrary to this, the republican view, as championed by Habermas, claims that there is an inherent link between human rights & democracy & thus both principles must be universalism of human rights & the inherent particularism of democracy. This tension cannot be overcome by creating a global state, but may be alleviated by formulating a definition of internal state-guaranteed fundamental rights applicable to non-citizens as well, for example by the right to seek asylum, as well as by the requirement that all democratic communities globally promote respect for human rights & for the establishment of democratic institutions worldwide. 18 References. Adapted from the source document.

Looking at the European Constitution & the legal attainments of the European Union from the perspective of the modern nation-state leads to aporia & Euroskepticism since the European Union has never been, nor will it ever be, a political community modelled after the nation-state. The nation-state as a constitutional institution is not tantamount to political processes; it is one of the historical options of the political. The state & politics cannot be equated: the nation-state is a political institution while politics is a process with various alternatives of institutionalization. These two sides, the constitutional state & the political processes, are in the relationship of soft incommensurability & it is not quite possible to equate them in some higher association. Equating the constitutional state & the political activity in present-day debates on the European Constitution results in Euroskepticism. Conservative theoreticians of the state & politics cannot study the constitutional state separately from political processes. For them Europe is possible solely as a constitutional state with democratic legitimation; otherwise it will never come into being. These theoreticians view the relationship between the constitution & politics as the means-ends or cause-effect category, & not as an open-ended process between two one unequatable media that are semantically mutually irritating. The goal of the European politics is not a European state, nor is the goal of the European constitution to curb the spontaneity of European political processes. The European Union is an open-ended semantic relationship between its legal attainments & its political processes. Consequently, the concept of democracy as a political form will have to be redefined. The European Union as a political community sui generis should be explained from the perspective of contemporary theories evolved along the lines of the linguistic & deconstructivist reversal of the modern substantionalist rationalism, universalism & cosmopolitism. The major contribution of these post-modern theories is that they do not consider political reality as an objective given, but as a construct for which we know how it was produced so that we can change it. This means that the object of study is not the constitutional-legal reality but the knowledge of the constitutional-legal reality that is continuously expanded by means of the new designations of the semantically nonexistent political environment. The European Constitution & the European politics are in the relationship of mutual semantic irritation, but are not identical & will never become identical. References. Adapted from the source document.