Suchergebnisse

The source of the four centuries of controversies surrounding Althusius's Politics is not the work itself but its interpretations. The author argues that Althusius's political teaching is not controversial; further, its methodical nature is highly conducive to a theoretical debate about the political/theoretical & cultural tradition of thought in general. The author first identifies the fundamental concepts of Althusius's political thought, & the logic of his exposition in Politics. He shows that Althusius's work is a systematic -- methodically presented -- study of politics, defined as a way in which people unite to have a good life by means of the communicatio of things, services & rights. Consequently, political science deals with the real or ideal ways of this association & its results. Althusius was the first author who explicitly said that only a people as a whole may be sovereign. He also created a theoretical concept of popular sovereignty. That part of his teaching is Althusius's greatest & largely undisputed contribution to political thought. In the second part, the debate about the interpretation of the "controversial" fundamental tenets of Althusius's teaching is reviewed, the tenets that refer to the essence of human community & the character of its political organization. The author concludes that Althusius's work is a type of junction of the then "defeated," but today increasingly popular, ideas: communitarianism (vs individualism) & social solidarity (vs the one-sided maximalization of individual benefit), a kind of matrix-type structure of the social system (vs political-pyramidal), ie, the autonomy of its parts (vs the monolith centralist-state system). In the dawn of a new era, the elements of those traditions that were soon to be (temporarily) defeated, were systematically depicted in Althusius's epochal opus, whose internal potential is increasingly recognized as one of the most relevant provenances of modern political thought. 25 References. Adapted from the source document.

The speech given by Stjepan Mcsic, President of the Republic of Croatia, at the conference "15 Years of Croatian Democracy" held at the Faculty of Political Science of the University of Zagreb on 11 November 2005 gives an account of the evolution of democracy in Croatia. The importance of the role of the Croatian parliament (Sabor) is analyzed. The Croatian Sabor has not only been the institutional state/legal expression of the sovereignty of the Croatian people within various state & national entities (apart from the period between 1918 & 1941) but also an expression of communality as a manifestation of the freedom of speech, assembly & agreement -- in short, the ultimate expression of the popular democratic spirit. In this speech, various aspects of the democratic development in Croatia since 1990 are analyzed. It is pointed out that in the last fifteen years Croatia has witnessed social & political protests & conflicts on a variety of occasions & for a variety of reasons, proving that it is capable of coping with ideological, social & political antagonisms & discords. Adapted from the source document.