An insightful look through the history of punishment and prisons offers a new perspective on the changes that have been undergone or would occur in the Romanian penitentiary system. In the last instance the Romanian punishment and prisons have not displayed the same functions from their origin till now. The study of documents, old chronics and writings of various historians unveil huge differences in thinking the punishment and the role of prison in different historic ages. There were times when the prisons were situated either in the center of society (in country's Principe or boyars' courts) or times when they were placed at society's periphery. The execution was public or hidden. A trip in the history of the Romanian detention system opens a wide window toward the future of this social system.
Republic of Moldova has clearly established the strategic direction of development - the European integration. In this context, it requires a deep reform in all spheres of social life according to the EU standards, including the territorial-administrative delimitation. The system of territorial-administrative organisation of the Republic of Moldova still supports the consequences of the Soviet totalitarian system which is manifested by the excessive fragmentation of the territory. It is analyzed the impact of the excessive fragmentation in small administrative entities as a dimension and capacity for democracy development at the local level. In conditions of the insufficient resources, specific to this system, the local authorities cannot provide citizens with the qualitative public services. It is justified the idea of administrative-territorial achievement whose purpose should be the territorial consolidation by respecting the norms and current practices of the European space, including the accession to the parameters set by Nomenclature of Territorial Units for Statistics (NUTS).
The review in 2003 of the territorial-administrative structure for the purpose of replacing the 10 districts with 32 districts, and the creation of 252 new administrative-territorial units of the first level was, to a certain extent, a return to the old administrative organization of the Soviet period. Democratization of the society needs to change the focus towards local initiative and the strengthening of regional centers. The improvement of the administrative-territorial structure is an effective lever to encourage local initiative and to successfully implement the functioning of the public administration. The logical organization of a State's territory contributes to the judicious ordering of state power and administration. It meets the general interest and fully meets the local needs and requirements contained in the administrative-territorial units. The administrative organization of the territory must meet the judicious division of the territorial limits taking into account the traditions, mentalities and the needs for good governance and democratic criteria. The option for a particular model of administrative-territorial organization must be the result of deep scientific investigation. The territorial-administrative reform requires a thorough preparation. It is necessary to provide substantiation of political, economic, social and financial standing of such actions. The problem of financial resources, which primarily refers to training local taxation, is a vital issue. This is because it involves financial autonomy, a central component of local autonomy, without which the decentralization can not work. Insufficient training can lead to some unexpected consequences or compromising actions. In organization and demarcation of territorial administrative units (by number, structure, size, etc.) the social, material, financial costs and all the activities related to them can not be neglected for a short, medium or long term.
In: Polis: revistă de științe politice ; revista Facultății de Științe Politice și Administrative, Universitatea "Petre Andrei" din Iași = Polis : journal of political science, Band 7, Heft 1, S. 93-115
The article surveys the various stances taken in interwar Romania towards the contemporary international - particularly French - trends of legal and political theory meant at counteracting the shortcomings manifested by the legislative patterns of Napoleonic provenance when confronted with the exigencies of expanding associational life and the need of growing state intervention in the sphere of the relations between economic factors. The crisscrossing visions of federalist syndicalism and, respectively, juridical socialism - exposed most conspicuously by the legal philosophers Léon Duguit and Emmanuel Lévy - are shown to receive various evaluations in the local milieu, from the part of authors connected with the leading journal of the Romanian Social Institute and otherwise (and always by reference to the predicament of social reform in the national space). It is highlighted that the impact of the ideas involved in the debate was broader and more diffuse than one could assume when taking into consideration only the outspoken - and partly obsolete - objectives and premises of the argumentations in question.
The article explores the way political participation, representation and governance are conceptualized and rationalized by the Romanian legislation on parties. The plurality of parties was initially set up as a way to discipline and organize the political pluralism manifest in society in order to contain it within the boundaries imposed by the Constitution. This disciplinary vocation of parties was confirmed and reinforced by the laws enacted in 1996 and 2003 that embedded parties into a functional vision of democracy where they were explicitly endowed with the public mission of ensuring the political integration of Romanian citizens. The detailed rationalization of parties' mission to organize citizens' political participation and to contain the expression of their political will contrasted sharply with both the ambiguity of their governmental role within the "eclectic" institutional design of the Constitution, and with their organizational friability.
The reforming of the local power territorial organization in the Republic of Moldova is an obvious fact. The need for change is known at the government and civil society levels and it is frequently addressed by the academic environment. The article summarizes the multiplicity of approaches, positions and expected outcomes of the reform in a synthetic model that includes the principles, objectives and conditions of the successful implementation of the local power territorial organization reform in the Republic of Moldova. It is argued the idea of abandoning the paradigm of the "administrative-territorial organization of the state territory" in favour of the public power territorial organization paradigm. The pursued aim is to reduce the theoretical and conceptual fragility of the reform.
It is certain that contemporary higher education institutions have entered the era of great transformation. The environment they operate in has changed fundamentally: professional knowledge and skills have become the main generator of economic development. At the same time, the university is no longer the only provider of high-quality knowledge. Competition on the market of knowledge and academic education services is getting tougher. The efforts made by national education in modernizing and reforming the national higher educational system, in the context of European rigors and exigencies, would not be that obvious if they were not supported by our international partners through various community programs. The successful promotion of reforms in the educational system becomes possible only in terms of identifying, taking over good European practices in the field and implementing/ institutionalizing beneficial and valuable elements for the national higher education system. Good enforcement of reforming provisions is not possible unless there is a cooperative framework between the three main actors. The government shall implement new modern policies in higher education system; the civil society, on its turn shall take the responsibility and availability to be engaged in the reforming processes, and the higher education institutions shall accept the new context and implement the reforms on the institutional level, cooperating in the same way with the other two actors, meanwhile paying attention to the labour market.
During the three decades of independence, in the Republic of Moldova has been undertaken several actions regarding the territorial reorganization of the local power and administrative mechanisms at subnational level. But these were insufficient, and in some cases badly achieved, being ostentatiously rejected by the political actors and officials from the state and local public authorities. In general, the reforms and restructuring of the public administration at the local level and, implicitly, of the territorial organization of the local public power, have been achieved according to the political tactics and changes, but not on the basis of coherent strategies and with clearly defined goals. Chronologically, the process of reforming the territorial organization of the local power has covered three distinct stages: First stage: perpetuation of the soviet-type centralized territorial administrative delimitation, which covers the period from the declaration of Independence till the end of the 1998. Second stage: trying to build the territorial system of exercising the local public power in the spirit of the decentralization and local autonomy principles, which lasted from the end of the 1998 till 2003. Third stage: returning to the centralized territorial organization of the local public power, which started in 2003 and lasts until now. There was a return at the soviet system of local public power organization; the number of local collectivities of the first level was increased by 30% compared to the previous period. In this article has been analyzed these three distinct stages of the reforming process of the local power territorial organization in the Republic of Moldova.
The present study investigates the major problems and challenges faced by the Romanian educational system during the last years of Nicolae Ceauşescu's regime. My main focus is on the so-called "polytechnic" education as a mean to reform and improve the system, and the debates it generated starting with the late 1970s. Consequently, the paper also examines the evolution of the debate and the top-down and bottom-up projects and initiatives to reform the educational system during the first decade following the collapse of the communist regime in Romania in December 1989. The aim is to present the clashing visions of different actors over the idea of reform and the urge to implement it, nonetheless to reveal the long term deadlock generated by this situation within the Romanian educational system.
The article submit to the multidimensional analysis of the degree of security sector reform, its modernization according to the requirements of the European structures, the level of the civic control of the security bodies. The same context is attributed to the analysis of national risks and vulnerabilities, of the potential of the state's investment in security institutions and the interest of political power, that is, of the governing parties to control the security institutions, the improvement of the crisis management mechanism, the realistic risk assessment. It is certain that, due to the external conditionality, in order to fulfill the requirements of the Association Agreement with the EU, the national security system of the Republic of Moldova is in a continuous transformation through reform and modernization both vertically, related to the subordination of the national security bodies and the extension of functional competences, as well as horizontally, referring to internal institutional restructuring and the limitation of the opening of these institutions to civil society.
In: Buletinul Științific al Universității de Stat B. P. Hasdeu din Cahul: The scientific journal of Cahul State University B. P. Hasdeu. Științe sociale = Social sciences, Heft 1, S. 4-14
It is important to study the decentralized government's bases for the current period of Moldova's development, to develop its conceptual bases and to create a theoretical model of decentralization which would be most acceptable for existing realities and would produce the expected results following the consistent introduction in daily practice. An issue which decentralization of public power depends very much and should be considered as a priority is the creation of a favourable normative and institutional framework to decentralization process. Although the Parliament of Moldova approved the National Decentralization Strategy, in its practical realization there are still many inconsistencies and shortcomings.
Since its origins, in the context of the Cold War's beginning, NATO has been a robust defensive alliance, acting in accordance with UN Charter, as a collective defence structure based on solidarity and mutual trust. Nowadays it has 28 member states and one can say that it fulfilled its main role: to protect the West against communist/Soviet threats using the deterrence and containmemt tools. Neither USSR nor its main instrument, the Warsaw Pact dare to attack the Euro-Altantic area. Our main assumption is that because the specific national interests of each member state, because of the domestic-constitutional issues and bureaucratic obstacles, the Alliance cannot yet forge a common strategic culture for all its members and also lacks a common lens for detecting real risks and therats, be they nation states or non-states actors. Nowadays, Russia and Islamic State are the main adversaries for the Western states, thus NATO should be more effective in dealing with them. And there is a need for reform and transformation. Divergences between adepts of territorial defence and those of pro-active "out of area" missions go in addition to divergences concerning the neeed for increased defence budgets for all members and especially concering the attitude towards Russia. Moscow used economic and energy tools trying to divise some allies like Hungary, Greece and Bulgaria and it partially succeeded. Using some theories of alliances and of democratic peace, resorting to recent facts and figures related to NATO's activities and plans, will help the reader understand the problem of increasing the power vs. increasing the security dilemma and the prospect of future conflicts.
Nowadays, criticism of the UN is related to excessive bureaucracy, to the parallelism in the functions of many of its structures. In addition, the UN is accused of reacting more to crises than preventing them. The selective interest of the United Nations in conflicts in different regions of the world gives reasons to assert the presence in its activity of double standards. Especially, the UN authority has been greatly undermined by such events as the United States's actions in Iraq and Yugoslavia, after which many have questioned international law in general and United Nations, in particular. Thereat, there are a lot of statements that the United Nations is in the deepest crisis and there is a set of proposals and views on the content and essence of the need for UN reform. In this article, the author argues the opportunity of UN reform, elucidating some current gaps in the work of this international organization and coming up with concrete recommendations to remedy them.
Nowadays, criticism of the UN is related to excessive bureaucracy, to the parallelism in the functions of many of its structures. In addition, the UN is accused of reacting more to crises than preventing them. The selective interest of the United Nations in conflicts in different regions of the world gives reasons to assert the presence in its activity of double standards. Especially, the UN authority has been greatly undermined by such events as the United States's actions in Iraq and Yugoslavia, after which many have questioned international law in general and United Nations, in particular. Thereat, there are a lot of statements that the United Nations is in the deepest crisis and there is a set of proposals and views on the content and essence of the need for UN reform. In this article, the author argues the opportunity of UN reform, elucidating some current gaps in the work of this international organization and coming up with concrete recommendations to remedy them. ; Țarălungă, Victoria. Reforma organizației națiunilor unite – un imperativ al secolului XXI / Victoria Țarălungă // Conferinţa naţională cu participare internaţională "Ştiinţa în Nordul Republicii Moldova: realizări, probleme, perspective", ed. a 3-a, 21-22 iun. 2019. – Bălţi, 2019. – P. 465-473.
Nowadays, criticism of the UN is related to excessive bureaucracy, to the parallelism in the functions of many of its structures. In addition, the UN is accused of reacting more to crises than preventing them. The selective interest of the United Nations in conflicts in different regions of the world gives reasons to assert the presence in its activity of double standards. Especially, the UN authority has been greatly undermined by such events as the United States's actions in Iraq and Yugoslavia, after which many have questioned international law in general and United Nations, in particular. Thereat, there are a lot of statements that the United Nations is in the deepest crisis and there is a set of proposals and views on the content and essence of the need for UN reform. In this article, the author argues the opportunity of UN reform, elucidating some current gaps in the work of this international organization and coming up with concrete recommendations to remedy them. ; Țarălungă, Victoria. Reforma organizației națiunilor unite – un imperativ al secolului XXI / Victoria Țarălungă // Conferinţa naţională cu participare internaţională "Ştiinţa în Nordul Republicii Moldova: realizări, probleme, perspective", ed. a 3-a, 21-22 iun. 2019. – Bălţi, 2019. – P. 465-473.